


Earp Fiction Addiction Podcast - Season 1

by DarkWiccan, Delayne, Laragh



Series: The Earp Fiction Addiction Podcast [1]
Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Episode Transcript Included, F/F, F/M, Podcast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-03-30 12:17:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 296,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13951389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkWiccan/pseuds/DarkWiccan, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delayne/pseuds/Delayne, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laragh/pseuds/Laragh
Summary: Fanfiction is important. Wynonna Earp fanfic helps us survive the hiatus between seasons, and the wait between Fridays. Join us January 2018 as we take a deep dive into the wonderful and varied world of Wynonna Earp Fanfiction!We'll discuss popular titles. Provide reviews and recommendations. And even interview authors. It's going to be #amazeballsThe Earp Fiction Addiction podcast. Discussing (almost) all things Wynonna Earp Fanfiction related.





	1. This Show is Totally Clutch!

 

[This Show is Totally Clutch](http://efapodcast.com/this-show-is-totally-clutch) Click link to listen on show page!

ORIGINAL AIR DATE: JAN 15, 2018

It's our very first episode! [insert kermitflail.gif]

We are pulling out all of the stops by starting out with the MOST popular WEARP Alt. Universe fic series the 80's Mixtape AU by Piratekane and TheGaySmurf!

It's gonna be ACES!

Read the Series!: [You Can Tell Everybody This Is Your Song](https://archiveofourown.org/series/819408)

This Week's "Reverse-Sponsor": [The Fandras Fanbus!](https://www.fandrasfanbus.com/)

Pirate's "Desert Island" Fic: ["You're Going to Find Your Way Back Home" by TheGaySmurf](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12512120/chapters/28489144)

Smurf's "Desert Island" Fic: ["small town gun" by isawet](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7122703)

 

 

Transcript for the Deaf and HOH by Jordan R Thieleman and Flying Fanatic

EFA EPISODE 01 - THIS SHOW IS CLUTCH

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks, Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fiction, I am DarkWiccan and this is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : So, Delayne. This is so exciting! We have been talking about this podcast for at least a week.

DELAYNE : It feels like two. I don't know. I mean, time means nothing.

DARKWICCAN : Time means nothing anymore. So, I think before we dive into the main focus of the episode, which I’m sure everybody can tell what it is based on the nifty title, we should do a little bit of housekeeping first. Maybe we should tell them a little bit about ourselves, and how we sort of landed on this idea. Or, rather, how I landed on this idea and roped you into it.

DELAYNE : I totally willing - willingly was roped. So, it’s okay.

DARKWICCAN : Excellent. Well, both Delayne and I are fanfic authors, from way back in the day. This is not the first fandom experience for either of us. Wee both wrote for the _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ Willow/Tara sort of centric fanfiction group back in the day. This is so eloquent. I’m coming off so eloquent.

DELAYNE : You’re making it all sound like “Back in my day”...

DARKWICCAN : Back in the ‘00s before the kids used to have the Tinder and the Tweeters. No, but seriously we’re older. We’re mature fans. But –

DELAYNE : Sorry, the use of the word “mature” just kind of threw me there for a moment. But, high five!

DARKWICCAN : Well, how about this; we’re immature fans of a certain age.

DELAYNE : Better.

DARKWICCAN : Better? Okay. I like that. But this is - the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom is not our first fandom. For me, I started writing Xena fic, very briefly, before diving headlong into Willow/Tara fanfic. Specifically at the Kittenboard, which is sort of, like the main place to be if you are a Willow/Tara shipper. And also, gay. In the early thousands. Not that there – y’know, I mean, there are allies, there are lots of allies on that board, but really it’s –

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : It’s geared toward the Queer Lady types.

DELAYNE : And I found the board in 2005? I was a little late to the ship.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, considering the show was over by three years by then.

DELAYNE : Well, I also had missed a significant part of the show, because I am exactly the same age as the Buffy cast. So, when they started their freshman year in college, so did I. And, I was unwilling to go to the common TV room to watch shows with people around. So, I sort of missed entirely Willow and Tara. Until, I came back around to it later.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, but you caught up with it eventually. So –

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So yeah. And then you started writing.

DELAYNE : I did. I found the board. Gosh, I wish I remember how. Probably just consuming as much fic as I could. And -

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, if you were - if you were actively…

DELAYNE : I think it was the challenges that brought me round.

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah! Yeah. And, eventually, you actually started writing the challenges. And then we started writing the challenges. But then, we both just stumbled happily into this world of WEarpdom.

DELAYNE : Oh so happily.

DARKWICCAN : Oh so happily. How did you fall into Wynonna Earp? Was it me? Was it my fault? I can’t remember anymore

DELAYNE : I think it was. It was that post on the Kittenboard, that says “Hey, guys! You really need to watch this show.” And, so I finally - and, of course, it was finally shown up on Netflix, and I consumed it so quickly. And then, that was just before season two came out, so I didn’t have much wait time between the seasons.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, our timeline for discovering the show is very, very similar. Because I remember when there was ads for this show on SyFy, because I actively - my wife and I actively watch SyFy. It’s like one of the only cable channels that we watch. And, really, the only reason why we have cable. That and BBC America, but like, the, literally…

So, we saw the ads for it, but it was on a Friday night. And at the time, I was producing quite a lot of theater, and as a result, I was busy every Friday night, because theater tends to happen on the weekends, usually. So I was, legitimately, like, unavailable to watch this show, but I was curious about it, and kind of filed it in the back of my head. And then, it popped up on Netflix, and my wife and I looked at each other, and went, “That’s that show that we were going to watch, but I couldn’t”. We couldn’t watch, because, stupid me was busy with theater stuff. So, we watched. We binged it in less than a week.

And then, I went on –

DELAYNE : I’m fairly certain mine was a span of three days.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And then, I went on the Kittenboard, and was like, “Hey Kittens. Yo. You need to be watching this show.” And, a few kittens answered that call. That rallying cry. Not a lot, though. You being one of them. We have other friends.

DELAYNE : Well, there’s not as many on the board as there used to be, either.

DARKWICCAN : That’s true. It’s weird that once you get, like, more than a decade out from the end of a series, how, you know, people tend to trickle off.

DELAYNE : Just a little. It happens.

DARKWICCAN : But, anyway. So, we discover _Wynonna Earp_ and immediately it was, like - then there was this empty void to fill between the, y’know, after bingeing the show in less than a week, and then, I had, like, months to go before the premiere for season two. And, I was like, “I need to fill this void with something.” And, that’s when I started _reading_ fic. I wasn’t writing fic for Wayhaught yet, I was just consuming it. Consuming mass quantities, like the coneheads from _Saturday Night Live_.

DELAYNE : Whereas I was actively avoiding fanfic for a little while. And, I think it was once Laragh finally published her first one, where I was, okay, I got to start reading that.

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah! So, our buddy, Laragh, she’s a fic author, also from the Kittenboard, who has transitioned over to AO3. She still is on the Kittenboard, though, as a moderator. She’s fantastic. She wouldn’t believe how young she is. And, we’re not going to go too deep into Laragh today, because, we have other fics to talk about. But, yeah, I have to admit that I was reading fic, but then Laragh wrote her fic, and I was like, “Alright, then.”

DELAYNE : Yeah. Yes. Need to consume more of her now.

DARKWICCAN : If Laragh’s invested, this is a huge moment. She’s gonna be so embarrassed when she hears this. Maybe we should cut this part out.

DELAYNE : That is totally fine.

DARKWICCAN : But, we’re probably going to have to cut back a lot of this. Otherwise, we’re going to use our entire half hour talking about how we got into _Wynonna Earp_.

DELAYNE : Yeah. I’m not sure how best to cut this, but…

DARKWICCAN : I’ll find a way. Yeah.

DELAYNE : You’ll find a way. You’ll make it work. If not, we still have time. We can re-record some.

DARKWICCAN : So, anyway. So, I started writing some Wayhaught fic, just little things, to sort of dip my toe into it. And then Delayne, you wrote a piece.

DELAYNE : I did! I started out with something - I started one idea. And then, suddenly, I had a second idea. And then, I had a third idea. And it’s the third one that finally made it. Published.

DARKWICCAN : Every fic author right now, that is listening to this podcast, knows exactly what you’re talking about. Exactly what you’re talking about. But really, more than writing fic, we’ve just been reading. Reading, reading, reading, and just falling in love with these authors of this fandom. I mean, just some of the most well-written works.

And, the thing is, they’re all different. Every author comes into it with their own voice. And, that’s not news, right? That’s normal. But, the fact is, when you have all these different people, writing essentially about the same thing, but in so many different varying and exciting ways, in evocative ways, it’s just - it’s mind-blowing.

I don’t remember, I mean, even at the height of  the Kittenboard, I think there was, maybe, a top 20 authors list, that you can go, “these are my top 20 that I’ll definitely go to.”

DELAYNE : I can still list them.

DARKWICCAN : I can list them too. But here in the WEarp fandom, there’s so many amazing authors, and some of them are just - they’ll just toss out one piece, and then they’ll go back into the void. And, you’re like, “But, no! Come back! That was brilliant!” You know? But there are so many authors that it’s like, they deserve their - you know, it’s like, “Oh man! They deserve a moment in the sun!” And, that’s sort of, like, beyond just, the forum postings, right? Like, beyond the AO3 and fanfic.net. They deserve to, like, you know…

DELAYNE : Yes!! Before kudos and comments.

DARKWICCAN : Exactly!!

DELAYNE : They need to be recognized.

DARKWICCAN : Yes! Yes! And there’s so many of them, that the only thing we can do is create a podcast. Because, we’re literally - I’ve no concern about our ability to keep this podcast going for a fairly long while.

DELAYNE : It’s as much as we fangirl over the show, we are as much fangirling over these fics and these authors

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah! A thousand times! So, which brings us to this episode. Episode number one. The premiere. Come on, listeners, you know that we were going to come out swinging with a heavy hitter for our first episode. And, boy, are we going to deliver. Today’s topic is the 80s Mixtape Alternative Universe. The 80s Mixtape AU.

DELAYNE : Uh, which is massive at this point, and it’s only growing. I am super excited!

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s absolutely - it’s amazing what Piratekane, who on AO3 is known as gilligankane, but we’re going call her Pirate, per her request. It’s amazing what Pirate has created with her Beta, TheGaySmurf, who we’re also going to call Smurf, per her request.

It is truly… when I try to describe this fic to people who don’t understand, who don’t understand Wayhaught, and who don’t understand queer culture and the void that exists, y’know, like, there are a million and one “boy meets girl” romcoms out there in the world, right? You know what I mean? So, there’s a sort of cognitive dissonance. “Well, what do you mean those kinds of 80s romances don’t exist? They - of course, they exist!” Well, y’know, no, you don’t understand! This is like, the John Hughes/Cameron Crowe mashup, queer lady 80s movie, the LGBTQ community never got and totally deserves.

DELAYNE : Totally, totally needs.

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely needs, is desperate for! My gosh! The thing about these fics is especially the - especially, especially the first one in the series, which is called it’s like I wrote every note with my own fingers. I - tell me if you had the same experience, Delayne. When I was reading it, I felt like I was watching a movie. Like, it was so perfectly described and clear, and the characters were so crystallized, that I felt like I was watching the movie. And, not reading the story.

DELAYNE : Well, it helps that, that first scene is so 80s movie iconic.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. I mean, yeah.

DELAYNE : And I think that mindset is what helped it produce that image automatically, and, therefore, the imagery was able to sustain so easily.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely. Essentially ripping that moment directly out of Say Anything. But, still making it completely, completely unique.

DELAYNE : Oh, yeah!

DARKWICCAN : And completely owning it, you know? And then, just the fact - the detail. The attention to detail in these stories is ridiculous. And, here’s the really crazy part to me, Delayne. The crazy part to me is that Pirate is younger than all of us. Like, she - she did not experience the 80s. You and I, giving up how old we are, you and I lived through the 80s.

DELAYNE : I was on the young side, but I have older brothers, so, that helped me, sort of. And, lots of cousins, with their big bangs and the hair. I definitely was witness to it, if memory is a little bit fuzzier, perhaps, than yours.

DARKWICCAN : Well, you know me. I’ve got garbage can brain that just collects everything. That doesn’t let go. But –

DELAYNE : I am as oblivious as Wynonna.

DARKWICCAN : So, we balance each other out, which is why we make great co-hosts, and also great friends.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : But, no, I was also a kid in the 80s too. I wasn’t a teenager, you know, like the Waverly and Nicole in the series. I was, y’know, I was 6 years old in 1986. So, you know, it’s not like I’m sitting there going, yeah man, I remember, you know, going on dates to the roller rink. Yeah, not at all. It was more like, I remember going to the roller rink with my daycare group. But I mean, I still remember it.

DELAYNE : I went to the roller rink because my family grew up at the roller rink, so all of my cousins were always there, we always did the New Year’s Eve, stay up all night, playing  videogames and skating.

DARKWICCAN : But jumping back to the fic, if anyone out there who is listening to this podcast hasn’t read this series yet, I’m going to tell you right now, go ahead and pause this, go ahead and pause this, and at least go and read the first story, which is it’s like I wrote everything with my own fingers. At least read the first story. We’ll put links, you know, on the episode page, so that you can easily access the series page, for the series.

DELAYNE : Go read it now. I mean –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, just go hit pause, go read it, and then come back. We’ll wait.

SHORT SILENCE

DARKWICCAN : Okay, you back? Okay, excellent. It’s not just the attention to detail of the time period, it’s also the characterizations. Because, this entire series is told from Nicole’s point of view. And, it’s Nicole, but, it’s not Nicole. This is an original Nicole that was basically built off of a skeletal framework of the idea of Nicole from the series, Wynonna Earp. So, Pirate has basically come in and created these completely original characters just kind of based on sketches of ideas of the characters from the television series.

So, you could really take this series, change the names, and publish it. Or even - or change the names, make it a movie script and film it, cause my god… But, I love  - I love her Nicole. Like, what do you think?

DELAYNE : The connection to the canon is awesome, and it’s all in the little details. Yes, this is Nicole as its own Nicole, but, just the little things, even, you know, they live on Homestead Avenue, and I had some other great ones too. But, I didn’t write anything down.

DARKWICCAN : Well, here are the things that I love. Okay, I love that we do have the touch-stones from the show. You know, we’ve got Homestead Avenue, to start. We’ve got Nicole wants to be a cop, when she graduates from High School. We’ve got Gus is there. Obviously Wynonna and Waverly are there, but, we’ve got, you know, you’ve even sort of tertiary characters, like Chrissy Nedley, you know, is there, so - and of course, Randy. Her dad. And, so all of the characters… Go ahead.

DELAYNE : And I actually love Chrissy in - I mean, Chrissy is such a great character.

DARKWICCAN : Oh! Right?! Well Chrissy is sort of the original Wayhaught shipper. Like, she ships Wayhaught so hard. You know? It’s adorable. It’s absolutely adorable, and I love how she’s continuously smacking Nicole upside the head for being an idiot. Because, my god, with Nicole. Boy…

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Howdy! She gets stuck in her head, like so hard.

DELAYNE : But, remember when you were a teenager?

DARKWICCAN : Exactly, exactly, and that’s what I love about how Pirate has captured this world and these characters is that, not only has she captured the essence of them, but she’s also cap-- she’s also been able to distill that certain unique quality, that teenagers have. And you get some teenagers that are super cocky, and they never, like, with Wynonna here. You get some teenagers who are very kind oif anxious, and very, and they second guess everything, and that is - and they get stuck in their head! And, that is totally Nicole. And then thing I love about the fact that it’s all from Nicole’s point of view is that, that Waverly is sort of is this enigmatic character, you know. And, I also love that when you go back on second and third readings, you start to really see what - Waverly's side of it. But, you know what I mean?

DELAYNE : Yes. It’s like oh, I should’ve picked up on that.

DARKWICCAN : But, like, oh my gosh, Waverly has been sitting here, you know, waiting for Nicole to make a move for years! And, Nicole is so stuck in her head, you know, and she’s - it’s completely just like vvvmmmp. Just going right, flying right past her.

DELAYNE : Even just the first fic, how many times Nicole just [smacks twice] stop it! You just want to reach through and just shake her.

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah, right. What is wrong with you? You’re blowing it! You’re blowing it! Yeah, absolutely. And again, it’s just the descriptions of not only the locations and the clothes, and the music -  

DELAYNE : Oh, the clothes.  

DARKWICCAN : Oh, the clothes.  

DELAYNE : I did the - there’s very few notes that I wrote. But I did write “Rosita as Madonna”.  Cause, that is just an image that I just –

DARKWICCAN : But, it fits, it fits so perfectly, right? I can totally picture Rosita dressed up as, y’know, the early 90s Madonna. Y’know, the borderline Madonna, like, starlight, starbright, Madonna. Well, you can totally with the lace and the bangles and what not, and y’know, you can see it, and the teased curl. What was it? What was it? The thing that they - crimped. Crimped hair with the… Yeah.

DELAYNE : The crimped. Oh! Sorry, my wife had mentioned a side ponytail the other day.  And, I might have actually worn a side ponytail the rest of the day.

DARKWICCAN : Are you serious? I didn't think you had enough hair for that.

DELAYNE : Yeah I’m serious. No, it’s been a year since I cut it, so - I’ll send you the picture.

DARKWICCAN : Well, maybe we can put that up on the site as –

DELAYNE : Yeah, so side ponytails. I mean…

DARKWICCAN : I love side ponytails.

DELAYNE : I never-never could pull it off when I was younger, but - we’re bringing it back. We’re bringing it back around.

DARKWICCAN : But yeah, the - another thing I really love about this series is that it’s not linear. Like, each tape in the series is a captured moment in time, but not necessarily picking up where the last one left off.

DELAYNE : Yeah, it’s not one scene right to the next, right to the next. You actually have to be paying attention. Follow along. Oh, okay, yeah, we’re a little while down the road.

DARKWICCAN : But, each time that Pirate does, y’know, leap in time, she’s so - again, she’s so detail oriented and Smurf, who is, I think, closer to our age, has also done a really good job of keeping her - first of all, Smurf is like the World’s Greatest Beta.

DELAYNE : I have read her praise, and yes.

DARKWICCAN : She’s the World’s Greatest Beta. And, she’s done a really great job of keeping Pirate, sort of on schedule, but also putting out really, really high quality stuff. And, you and I both know as writers, that it’s one of the hardest things to do is to set a schedule and if you don’t have work finished, ready to go, it is really hard to keep to that schedule. So, kudos to both of them, for maintaining this blistering pace that they have set for themselves. Which is every Friday. Every Friday they post a new single. And that just - it’s totally amazing to me. It’s absolutely - can you imagine? I can - the only way I – yeah.

DELAYNE : It’s crazy. Flabbergasted.

DARKWICCAN : The only way I’ve ever been able to meet a schedule like that is if I have a fic that is completed and already broken up, ready to post. And I, y’know, so it’s not… yeah. But I know that…

DELAYNE : Exactly. That’s why I never post anything anymore.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah! So, that’s one thing I want to ask them, is how far out are they planning. Y’know, how far out have they written these. Or are they really going a week at a time, cause woah, that’s incredible, especially - yeah. That’s just absolutely insane.  But, ever single single is so… every single single, did I really just say that?

DELAYNE :I like it. Every single, single.

DARKWICCAN : But, they’re their own captured moment in time, and whatever time it is, whether it is the early 80s, mid 80s, late 80s, 90s, it’s very, very clear where, y’know, where they are in time. And a lot of that is done with, you know, kind of background information. And, would you call this a song fic series?  Would you call it a song fic?

DELAYNE : Y’know… It’s connected to the songs, but I would not call it a song fic.

DARKWICCAN :I wouldn’t either.

DELAYNE : Because, it’s mmm. I don’t care much for song fics.

DARKWICCAN : You know what, generally, yeah. I find, you know, sorry song fic writers out there. I typically find the average song fic to be rather - not a great time. Not a great time to read. Because, it’s just, like, lyrics. It’s all lyrics, and like some - a couple of, like, descriptive lines in between each chorus. So, it’s like, well…

DELAYNE : Yes. Yeah, that’s the thing, it’s like, it’s mostly just a song with a little bit of - a little bit of drama or something in between.

DARKWICCAN : Which is exactly why I cannot classify the 80s Mixtape AU as a song fic series. I just… I can’t. It’s way too…

DELAYNE : It’s inspired.

DARKWICCAN : It’s inspired! Yeah! Yes! Good word! Yeah! It’s inspired by the music. But, it’s not married to the music in a way that, y’know, they can reference the music, the music is referenced, but it’s not like, they don’t have to quote lyrics. Y’know, Pirate does throw lyrics in. Kind of to just to point to - it seems like more, like, when she’s pointing out lyrics, it’s more like because Nicole has tuned into the lyric at that moment in time.

DELAYNE : Exactly. That lyric itself is speaking to her and she is understanding something about the situation happening. Hopefully. Or…

DARKWICCAN : Or just being being inspired in that moment by whatever she’s listening to. Yeah. So, what have been some of your favourite moments throughout the entire series?

DELAYNE : When Waverly calls Nicole to come pick her up from the bad date with Champ. And, that spoke to me because, because I remember back when I was oblivious to my own gayness, coming home from college, my mom would go through the list of all my friends, calling to see, hey, I was home from vacation and wanted to talk to me. And, there was one name, I’m like uh-huh, uh-huh, and she’d say that one name, that girl’s name, and I’d just drop everything and go pick up the phone.

DARKWICCAN : You had no idea why you were like…?

DELAYNE : So that right there, that is like, big gay clue. “What? Oh! The girl called!” Drop. I’m dropping everything. I need to go answer the call. I need to do this now.

DARKWICCAN : For me, in that first fic, the one that started it all. Yeah. For me, that was a big moment. But also, the date. The actual date. Not the end of the date, which was great. But, that’s not what I’m referring to - I’m referring to everything building up to that moment. Because, when -  there were a lot, there were a lot of things going on for me there. One was, gosh, this was basically how I would take a girl on a date, back when I was single, and dating, y’know?

And, secondly, when they go into Shorty’s, which in this series, in this universe is an arcade, which is just brilliant, oh my god, the brilliance! May they never run out of their shine. It’s just incredible. But seriously, when they walked into Shorty’s, I was like, immediately there with them. It was like, I was right there. Yeah, and –

DELAYNE : Oh yeah. I-I pictured my, my rink, pictured my rink and arcade. I knew exactly the bright colours, and the black lights, and the cheesy music. Oh yeah. I remember it well.

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah, and me too. I was picturing my, my roller rink, you know? Uh, and, it was like, a mixture of the roller rink in the arcade that I used to go to the most when I was younger. And I was just like, oh man, I’m right there.

DELAYNE : Right? And I, and I wonder about those who didn’t quite experience that, y’know, the younger generation of - I can’t even speak to some of them.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, right? You need to tweet at us to let us know what they were thinking.

DELAYNE : They need to tweet at us.

DARKWICCAN : But, so yeah, that, I think that for me, the biggest moment in the first fic was definitely the date. Well that, and, of course, Stephanie’s party.

DELAYNE : Oh! And see, that part didn’t speak to me. So, I didn’t do the party thing. I never did spin the bottle, so I was a little lost on that one. I certainly enjoyed the scene in the closet.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, because it’s a great scene. But like, for me, at this point, at that age,  was in the mid-90s. So, mid to late 90s, so, not the same areas as the 80s, but - one thing is, when you’re a theater kid, there’s okay, there’s a great sketch from _Saturday Night Live_ when  Lin-Manuel Miranda was hosting that was like, theater after party, high school theater after party. And, I’m like, oh my gosh, that is exactly, that’s exactly right. That’s - boy did they capture that perfectly, that is exactly what it’s like.

And you do kind of get into the whole Spin the Bottle thing, and, and you do all of these cliché things. You know, maybe that actually happens at other people’s parties too, but I only went to the theater kids’ parties, so I can only speak for that. But yeah, I remember getting stuck in a closet for Seven Minutes in Heaven, with a girl that I was crushing really hard on.

And, the great thing about when you’re in theater –

DELAYNE : Oh my gosh!

DARKWICCAN : Yeah! The great thing about when you’re in theater is that, you know, sexuality is kind of a loose and free thing, ‘cause everyone is trying to “be cool”.  

DELAYNE : Do you have any idea how jealous I am of you right now?

DARKWICCAN : But, I remember – but here’s the thing. Nothing happened in that closet. Nothing happened in that closet because I was terrified that it would. And that I wouldn’t, like, be good enough. And, I had a pretty healthy ego. But you know, back then. But, even because this was a girl that I - that I was really crushing on, I just remember just freezing. And we just kind of ended up standing on opposite sides of the closet and, just, sort of counting the minutes down, and just, kind of, not even talking to each other. It was super-duper awkward.

And, so, when that - when they get into the closet in the story, I was like “hoooo, what’s gonna happen?” ‘Cause like – ‘cause, like, Nicole is totally…

DELAYNE : And it does sort of started out like, “wait a minute…”  

DARKWICCAN : Yeah! I was like, “oh my gosh, what’s going happen…” And so – ‘cause, Nicole was like, I totally knew, I totally understood every thought that was racing through her head, ‘cause it was the same stuff racing through my head. And I was like, right back in that - right back in that closet with that gal, back in high school. So -  

DELAYNE : That is awesome. That is, I mean - I’m sorry for your story and how it ended up, but that is, like. That’s the great - that’s why we love these fics because, there’s something in it for everyone that’s going to speak to them in a really, just take them right there. And, oh my gosh, that’s amazing.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. And it seems that every single single - I did it again. It seems like everyone has a moment or two like that, and it’s a different moment for every reader, right? It’s different for every reader.

DELAYNE : Yes

DARKWICCAN : But, like, the whole thing in I can promise you tomorrow, which is the second fic, which actually takes place several years into the future, when, you know, when Waverly is away at college and she’s about to turn twenty one. I don’t wanna give away too much because I don’t know what our re- what our listeners have read so far, but basically, Nicole is planning this, this sort of surprise. And, I’m like “oh my gosh, that is exactly what I would have done.” That’s exactly what I would have done.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I never had a girl to surprise, but, I did surprise my parents once, on Valentine’s Day. They totally thought I was at school. They called me, and I’m like, “Oh yeah, I’m at school!” and I showed up. Yeah, it would have been better to show up for a girlfriend. But actually, no, cause that means it would be a long distance relationship. And I don’t think I could have handled that.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. I tried that once. _Once_. But - but yeah.

DELAYNE : So, but - that’s an episode that might speak to those who have them. Well, actually, I’ll be doing that very, very shortly, won’t I?

DARKWICCAN : Yes, that’s true! Yes! Because in real life, you have a thing that’s taking you to a place.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So, let me ask you something. So you say you’re pretty, pretty oblivious person. Like, you didn’t twig into the fact that you’re queer until late college?

DELAYNE : Uh, yeah. Late college.

DARKWICCAN : So, how was it reading love comes walking in, which is one of the youngest points that we see them, where Waverly, for the first time, is trying out for cheerleading and Nicole’s helping her out. And that sort of that – they have that moment at Shorty’s diner where Waverly walks in, and the jukebox is playing, and a particular song, and, all of a sudden, it was just like, sparkles. Like, the - Nicole had that moment of, “Ohhh crap, I’m totally in love with this girl!” Did you have, like, how was that reading that, cause you didn’t have that experience at a young age?

DELAYNE : No, I - the part that actually spoke to me more than that particular one was when she is trying out, or when she’s practicing, and she had brought up Nicole’s dad, and she’s super upset, so she thinks that’s why she’s having these weird feelings.

DARKWICCAN : Oh! The fact that she keeps trying to explain away feelings.

DELAYNE : Yes! Yes. That, that I definitely identified the most with, ‘cause I, you know, you think back and go, “Oh, yeah, that’s why…Why did I keep explaining those things away?”

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, but - why did you – no, that’s not why we are here. That’s not why we are here. Yeah, for me - go ahead?

DELAYNE : Ah, it was just, it was so well written that, you know, ‘cause, you know, that headspace certainly, I had it when I was much, much older, but, I recognized that headspace. Why am I feeling funny? Oh, it’s this completely other thing that has nothing to do with totally being in love with this girl. So, that’s all. This is so well written, I just, I can’t even. I am –

DARKWICCAN : I know, it’s really kind of ridiculous actually. The level of writing is the series is _insanely_ good. And, the fact that Pirate has written these characters, so that you fall in love with them for who they are in this universe.  

DELAYNE : Absolutely. Oh my gosh!

DARKWICCAN : Like, Curtis. Curtis is a character that we never met on the show, right, so she really had, Pirate had free reign to go in and really create this sort of perfect fatherly figure. And, boy, howdy, did she! I love Curtis. It makes me love her so hard.

DELAYNE : Yeah, and there was, there was lots of crying.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. But we won’t go into why. We’re not going to say why there was crying. Just that there was crying.

DELAYNE : There, there was lots of feels.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. But, another thing I really love, is speaking of tertiary characters, is I love that Pirate doesn’t - she’s not afraid to pick up these characters and make them the focus. Like, in we’ll get wild, wild, wild, the focus was on Doc and, you know, racing this other gang. Very _Grease Lightning_ style, right?  And then, yeah! And then, the final countdown, which was focused on Dolls and boxing and being the best boxer of the country club. The best boxer at the country club just still kind of blows my mind a little bit. Like, the country club has boxing?

DELAYNE : Best epic 80s montage, I mean…

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah!  The _Eye of the Tiger_ and everything.

DELAYNE : Best visual. But, you’re right, every single single has related to us. I mean, it’s this whole entire story, and it isn’t always necessarily about Waverly and Nicole. But it really just shows the universe so well, so that, you can picture it when you are focused on Waverly and Nicole. You can see really what they live in and how they are.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Yeah! And, everything is absolutely vivid. Everything is absolutely clear. And, let me just say that this series is the best representation of the Wynaught brotp of - I mean, there’s great Wynaught brotp fics out there, and we’ll explore that in a future episode, but, this series is like the gold standard.

DELAYNE : Top shelf, man, it’s top shelf.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, it is so top shelf! Yes! Oh, nice callback, dude. That was really awesome. Okay, well…So, is there anything else that you want to touch on before we move into the next segment of our show?

DELAYNE : I did write about how oblivious Nicole is to Waverly’s jealousy. I mean, that I identify with. Anything with obliviousness, I really identified with.

DARKWICCAN : You’re like, “that’s my jam.”

DELAYNE : Yes, that is my jam.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah! It really, well even in like, Waverly’s - Nicole is really, painfully oblivious. You almost wonder if she’s been taking lessons from Wynonna, ‘cause like…

DELAYNE : Well, that’s why they’re bros.

DARKWICCAN : That’s totally why they’re bros. Right? They’re just together in obliviousness.

DELAYNE : That line. Because I, you know, I did the re-read fairly recently, when Wynonna goes, “I thought you were supposed to be the smart one,” and Nicole responds with, “Well, you set the bar really low.”

DARKWICCAN : Oh my god, yes to the humor. The humor in these fics is just awesome. It’s just so, so funny. And they’re able to really walk that line, you know, of like going from humor to kind of a deep emotional moment, just, immediately, and you don’t feel like you have whiplash. It just feels like this natural, sort of, turn. Or, it goes the other way, you know? It could be this really deep, kind of sad or angsty moment, and then turn the corner and it’s - and somebody says something really funny and you’re like, “Oh man, I really needed that. Thank you for that right there.”  

DELAYNE : It is a roller coaster. Definitely. But, like you said, there’s no whiplash.

DARKWICCAN : There’s no whiplash, no. You don’t -

DELAYNE : It’s just fun. It’s just a fun ride.

DARKWICCAN : It is. Yes. It is the greatest ride. We - if you can’t tell folks - we this series and, we think that, if you haven’t read it yet, you should, and, you will love it too. Yeah, anything else you can think of before we – ‘cause, we can seriously just sit here and fangirl. Just, kind of off into tangents, about this series, probably for hours. But we, we would like to keep this to a tight, fairly tight show.

DELAYNE : I’m excited for the interview portions, but –

DARKWICCAN : Yes. So, that’s right folks. We do have author interviews lined up as part of this podcast as well. Not just this podcast, this episode day, but our podcast overall. We’ve actually set up a number of interviews already, we’re really excited to talk to these authors.

But today, of course to go with the 80s Mixtape AU fangirling discussion that we just had, we are going to have both Pirate and Smurf on the show with us in the second half of our show for a fantastic, and enlightening, and funny interview. We may even cry a little bit, who knows? So we hope you’ll stick around for that, but before we get into segment two, we do have something unique to our show, which - Delayne, [CONTENT CENSORED- SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT ON EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : 80s Instrumental

DARKWICCAN: Hey everyone, welcome back to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the Podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction, I am your host, DarkWiccan. Unfortunately, Delayne was not able to join me for the second segment of this program. So, we’re going to move ahead without her, but with her in our thoughts. As we mentioned before the break, our second and final segment is the author interview and we are incredibly excited because we have managed to get both the author and the beta for the 80s Mixtape AU Series. Pirate and Smurf. Welcome to you both. Hello Pirate!

PIRATE : Hey there.

DARKWICCAN : And hello Smurf!

SMURF : Hello!

DARKWICCAN : Welcome to the podcast. I’m so excited to have both of you on!

SMURF : Excited to be here.

PIRATE : Yes, we’re happy to be here.

DARKWICCAN : So, before we dive into the sort of main nitty-gritty questions, can I do a little, hey, how are you, how are you doing, who are you, what do you want kind of Q&A with you?  

PIRATE : Sure.

DARKWICCAN : Fantastic.

SMURF : Sure.

DARKWICCAN : So, Pirate, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get into this whole fanfiction sort of thing?

PIRATE : Oh… Well, as Smurf can tell you, I have been in the fanfiction game for a long time. That was probably, what? 11, 12 years?

SMURF : Yeah, I think it’s at least twelve. We have known each other for a long time.

PIRATE : A long time. And, I kind of dropped off when shows I was interested in stopped being cool. And now there’s _Wynonna Earp_ , so here I am again.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome. And so, what other fandoms did you write for before you got into _Wynonna Earp_?

PIRATE : _Criminal Minds_ was, I think my first.

DARKWICCAN : Nice.

PIRATE : And then there was [inaudible].

SMURF : That’s actually where we met.

PIRATE : Yes, it is. Yes it is.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, nice!

PIRATE : And then, there was the dark years, and now. And now we’re back in the light.

DARKWICCAN : Back in the light with _Wynonna Earp_.

PIRATE : Yes. Yes.

DARKWICCAN : And Mama Andras and Papa Bo.

PIRATE : Yes. So, much better than that dark hole of despair.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, so much better. Oh man! Uh, Smurf, how about you? How long have you, have you been in this thing we call fic?

SMURF : Well, as we’ve just mentioned, I’ve known Pirate for about twelve years through fic. Back in those days, though, I didn’t really do much writing. I was strictly a beta at that point. The _Wynonna Earp_ fandom is the first time that I actually I’ve ever started doing any of my own writing.

DARKWICCAN : And incredibly awesome writing, it is.

PIRATE : Yeah it is!

SMURF : Yeah.. Okay?

DARKWICCAN : No, it is! It is. Terrific writing! It is amazing, spectacular, wonderful writing. And, I can’t wait to gush about it! But let’s go and dive into some of the kind of main questions. What inspired you to write this kind of AU, Pirate? Was there a specific piece of 80s, or current media that kind of sparked the idea?

PIRATE : Yeah. So, I came up with the idea when I heard, Caught Up In You by 38 Special, which is a fave song. And, then, I don’t know, it just kind of spiraled out from there. And, because Smurf is the world’s biggest enabler, she helped me craft it into a grown up song fic. And, here we are, two hundred thousand words later.  

DARKWICCAN : And, wow, what a - I cannot tell you how impressed I am by the pace that you two have set on this series. It is truly amazing, and impressive, and mind boggling, how you’re able to turn out a new single every week. And, sort of speaking to that, do you schedule time to write, and has this changed how you, now that you have a regularly scheduled fic, y’know, from maybe where you used to, kind of, find the time to write to now when you’re on a set schedule you have to meet?

PIRATE : No. No, nothing has changed at all. I try to schedule time to write. Smurf can attest to that. But, I don’t really have a lot of room in my life to schedule out chunks of writing time. So, I make an effort to do that, but it’s usually, like a all day Friday push to get the final pieces into place so that we can post.

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha. And, how far out are you writing these in advance, if at all?

PIRATE : Oh, no. Not at all.

DARKWICCAN : Not at all! I’m even more impressed now.

SMURF : Yeah each one is every week.

PIRATE : Yeah, poor you! Poor Smurf.

SMURF : Why poor me?

PIRATE : You’ve got to read all of it.

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah, that’s got to suck!

SMURF : What?

PIRATE : It’s terrible!

SMURF: The worst part of my week. I can’t - I can’t even. No, I try to stay up with her too, instead of saving up all of the Beta for the end, usually, like, each time she completes a section, or scene, or something like that, I’ll jump right in and start working on that, so that we can stay on top of it. That way there’s not like a mad rush right before posting to try and fix things, and…

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that makes, that makes sense.

SMURF : Try to get it all done right before she has to post.

DARKWICCAN : So, Smurf, as a true child of the 80s, what has been the most important to you about how Pirate captures this era?

SMURF : Well, you guys know how I feel about details and accuracy. So, that’s kind of the - that’s the most important thing to me, I think. But, I’m really lucky because Pirate feels the same way I do. So, she always runs all the choices by me for authenticity check. Like, clothing, or the things that the kids would be doing for fun, y’know, what kind of things they would do with their hanging out, or, the general feel of things. And let me be clear about this; she is just as diligent with her research as I am about things. So, you know, if it means spending an hour researching when Ziplock bags became a thing, or, when small town grocery stores got paper or plastic, or, you know, when the two of us both fall down a research spiral about when pre-packaged frozen cookie dough became a thing and what brands were the first things found on the shelves, y’know, we both - we spend our time doing that, because, making sure that it’s, you know, authentic, and accurate to the 80s. It’s really important. But, she’s a fantastic writing partner, because she cares about getting it right just as much as I do. So, we love her.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Absolutely, Pirate, you do get it right. You get it right to the point my mind is frequently just blown because, y’know, I grew up in the 80s, Delayne grew up in the 80s, and both of us are just are weekly transported back to that time so vividly that we frequently talk about how it just - it feels like we are watching a movie instead of reading a fic. So, it is really, really incredible work.

PIRATE : Well, it could not be done without the both of us.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah! And, and as we know, Smurf is the world’s greatest beta.

PIRATE : Yes. [to flustered Smurf] Sit down, shut up, and don’t say anything now.

DARKWICCAN : So, let me ask both of you. When you first started working on the original story, did either of you have any inkling, when you were writing this initially that you were - how large it would become? How big of a deal within the fandom it would be?

PIRATE : absolutely not. This - no! Like, no. Just - and I still to this day, I will post on Friday and be like, nobody’s going to read this nonsense.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, but they will.

PIRATE : But, like… Yeah!

DARKWICCAN : You don’t understand, like - I plan my day around when you guys post. Like, Fridays are like; it is Flashback Fic Friday, and I am literally sitting at my computer at work, just waiting to get the notification from Smurf that you guys have posted, so that I can immediately retweet about it on the EFA Podcast twitter. And then, go and read it. I’ll just drop whatever I’m doing at work, and just immediately read whatever you’ve posted.  

PIRATE : Oh boy…

SMURF : See, I tend to disagree with her here on this one, because she always thought it was going to be this thing that nobody ever read, and I said from the beginning that it was going to be big.

PIRATE: Lies.

SMURF : No! Okay, now! I didn’t mean big as in I had no idea it was going to become this massive project it’s become. But I knew it was going to be big from the second you told me that you wanted to write it. That people were going to love it.

PIRATE : I mean, you did say that. I can’t argue that. But, like…

SMURF : Yeah! Exactly! Okay.

DARKWICCAN : And Smurf being right about so many things all the time, of course, was right about this.

SMURF : W-what? [bashful giggling ensues]

PIRATE : Need a minute?

DARKWICCAN : That was a compliment.

PIRATE : She doesn’t take those well… No.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so next time I’ll insult her. Okay.

PIRATE : No. No I’m not very good at that.

SMURF : Okay, see that’s how I know you love me.

DARKWICCAN : Ah, so, like you’ve said, you didn’t picture this giant massive project, that it’s become, that it now is. So now that you’re sort of both in it, how many singles do you plan on writing? Is there an end point? Or is this universe perpetual, are we going to follow Wayhaught into the thousands?

PIRATE : Well, the intention now, which was not always the intention to start, but I badgered Smurf into letting me do this, is to have an update every Friday until season 3 starts.

SMURF : You did not - you did not badger me into this.

PIRATE : I want to use the word badger, okay? Hufflepuff pride. Leave me alone.

SMURF : Okay. Alright, I’ll allow it.  

PIRATE : So yeah. We plan on posting every Friday until season 3.

SMURF : An entire year. There’s supposed to be an entire year of updates on Fridays until Season 3 starts.

PIRATE : Yep.

DARKWICCAN : And then, and then, that’s it, or?

PIRATE : And then, and then, Yeah. I think…

SMURF : I don’t know.  We might never let this go. Who knows?

PIRATE : I think the original, the original idea was to leave it be after the main fic, and then, obviously, we didn’t let that go. So, we can say that now, but…

SMURF : There was just, there was so much more left to tell.

PIRATE : Yes. That’s true.

SMURF : And, that couldn’t be the end. We had so much more to tell.

PIRATE : So many songs.

SMURF : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : There are a lot of 80s songs.

PIRATE : Good ones too.

SMURF : Good 80s songs.

PIRATE : Yeah, that distinction.

SMURF : Nicole is very particular about the songs she listens to.

PIRATE : I swear to God, if you come at me with some Wham! Right now… That’s a personal thing. That’s just me personally dissing on Wham!

DARKWICCAN : Not a fan of Wham! huh?

PIRATE : Yeah… Ahh!

DARKWICCAN : So, okay. So, Smurf, you mentioned that Nicole is very particular about her music and that is so true. She is incredibly particular about her music, she’s incredibly particular about her clothing, and I’m just curious, where did this, almost OCD obsession of hers with her clothes and her music, where is this coming from?

SMURF : Well… Pirate, you want to take that one?

PIRATE : Um… Sure.

SMURF : It’s… It’s kind of an amalgamation of the two of us really. Honestly.

PIRATE : Yeah. Yeah.

SMURF : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So who’s the music obsessive and who’s the clothes obsessive? I’m going to guess that Pirate is the clothes.

PIRATE : Am more than you, Smurf? Do you think?

SMURF : No, yeah. We both are. That’s pretty - yeah. But we’re both obsessed about the music too. That’s just it. She kind of is - yeah.

PIRATE : It’s really hard to separate, I think us individually from this fic and like, hash out what parts are more inspired by me, versus what parts are more inspired by Smurf. ‘Cause I think that her and I are just so similar, that –

SMURF : We’re really in sync with it and it shows in the fic, because everything that happens in the fic is basically born from both of us. There’s not really a - there’s not really a dividing line I don’t think honestly.

PIRATE : Yeah. I agree with that.

DARKWICCAN : So, would you kind of say that Nicole is sort of the proxy for both of you? A Pirate!Smurf?

PIRATE : Yes.

SMURF : Yes.

PIRATE : Now I’m picturing Pirate!Smurf. We have a picture of it.

SMURF : We have a - yes. We have a Pirate!Smurf we like to use as our logo.

DARKWICCAN : That’s adorable. Why haven’t I seen this on Tumblr?

SMURF : Really?

PIRATE : You can’t give everything away, Smurf.

SMURF : Okay, well maybe I’ll post it for you. Pirate!Smurf productions.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I know Pirate!Smurf hashtag, for sure. Pirate!Smurf productions. But I don’t think I’ve seen the logo, so I’m excited to see the logo.

PIRATE : Maybe sometime.  

DARKWICCAN : Someday. So, question for you both. So you’ve got this really large universe now. Have there been any sort of continuity or consistency issues as you’ve been shaping each of the singles going forward? That you’ve caught, obviously, ‘cause I couldn’t find any.

PIRATE : You want me to start, Smurf?

SMURF : Yeah, go ahead.

PIRATE : Writing it, I will say I’ve tried to keep it as consistent as possible. It’s super-duper tricky moving back and forth through the timeline. I think my biggest problem is actually giving things away. And Smurf has to kind of reel me back in and be like “We haven’t written that yet. Other people don’t know that.” But, if I have a continuity issue, Smurf always catches it.

SMURF : I feel like, with a universe this big, I mean it does. There’s potential to have continuity problems with something like this.  But, like, you guys have to understand that before we even started the first edition of the singles collection, I mean, we already had a large portion of the timeline laid out. I mean, we’re obviously still adding to it, you know, ‘cause we have to fill in the gaps, or, we’ll hear a song and be like, “oh my god, we have to do one for this!” You know? Or, things like that. But there’s some parts that we’ve always known. Even before the main original fic was published. There were just things we knew about their lives from when they were kids, and when they were adults, and things like that.  So, when you have a world and characters that are fleshed out to this extent, you know, it’s a lot easier, I think, to keep all of our details lined up and consistent. Because, you know, we already had so much of it in our heads before we started trying to write it out.

DARKWICCAN : Do you have some sort of a master outline, that document, or?

SMURF: Yes.

PIRATE : Yes, she says.

SMURF : Yes. It’s over 20 pages long already, so… and it’s still growing because that’s only with mostly - yeah, that’s not even touching the biggest it’s going be.

PIRATE : That doesn’t include like some of the recent stuff even.

SMURF : Yeah, cause those were things we added without them being on the outline yet, so… Yeah!

DARKWICCAN : Oh, so you’ve already written elements that you didn’t outline initially?

PIRATE: Oh my gosh, where do you think Nate!Cedes came from?

SMURF: Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Are you serious?

SMURF :Yeah, that was the spur - that was a late night, you know, in the middle of the night Smurf time brainstorm that we just started playing off of each other and then, suddenly, Nate!Cedes was born.  

PIRATE : Yeah, and then we wrote down their whole single by themselves.

SMURF : Yep, then they got a wedding out of the deal, so - just wait until you find out how they got together in the first place.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, I’m in - there is so much I’m looking forward to and finding out in this series. So much. I mean, of course, the Wayhaught wedding is a big one. We know it’s coming at some point. We don’t know when.  We don’t know –

PIRATE : Yeah, I was just going say, some people, they don’t - they don’t think so.

DARKWICCAN : Some people don’t think so?

SMURF : There’s been a lot of comments on this last one. People are thinking maybe it’s not going happen.

DARKWICCAN : You know, of course, I don’t have your master outline and your master plan to look at. But, I think Nicole’s got this big plan for the proposal, and she’s waiting for something. She’s waiting for something. We just don’t know what that something is. But I think there’s going to be a Wayhaught wedding, and you can neither confirm or deny that, but I think that’s coming. And I’m looking forward to finding out about Nate!Cedes, how that happened. I’m looking forward to finding out about other characters that are sort of on the periphery, like Dolls has sort of become a - well he was always a background character. He had his moment in the limelight for Final Countdown, but I’m curious what’s going on with that guy, you know?

PIRATE : Aren’t we all?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah! But yeah, there’s just so much to look forward to with each, with each released single, y’know. And so often, you guys both put out a single on a subject that I hadn’t even considered. And, it’s so much more awesome, ‘cause it’s like, I was like, that completely caught me by surprise and it was amazing and wonderful and warm. And, you both are so brilliant when it comes to handing out the feels, in your writing.

SMURF : Oh man.

PIRATE : Oh yes.

SMURF : Well, what’s the point of writing if we can’t serve it up with a nice side of feels?

PIRATE : Yes. Right? I mean, come on…

DARKWICCAN : The way that you capture - Pirate - the way that you are able to kind of grab us by the emotional center, every single time, and put us right in Nicole’s shoes is just devastatingly brilliant. We feel everything that Nicole is feeling. And, that wouldn’t be the case if you weren’t writing her so, so well.

PIRATE : Well, thanks.

DARKWICCAN : Well, you’re welcome.

PIRATE : Cool… alright.

DARKWICCAN : Okay. Alrighty, well, you know, I want to thank you both for coming on. I have one final question for you ladies. And, this is a question that we’ve decided we are going to ask all of our authors. Our question is; you’re stranded on a desert island, and you can only have one fanfic to read. What is it?

PIRATE : Smurf, you go.

SMURF : Nah, oh. Okay well, assuming that both of our libraries are precluded from this question -   

PIRATE : No, we’re not assuming that.

DARKWICCAN : No, you don’t have to assume that.

SMURF : I’m going to say, well, yeah, because – yes.

PIRATE : That’s not…

SMURF : I think - see, I have a problem because I have two. I have two that I want to say for this.

PIRATE : Yeah, but the rule says one. Only one.

SMURF : Can I say two?

DARKWICCAN : Flip a coin.

SMURF : Well, alright, so, I think my first instinct, since I’m not going to allow myself to say one of mine or one of Pirates, because that’s not nice…

PIRATE : Okay.

SMURF Okay. Okay, well –

PIRATE : No, no no no. Pick one of those. Go.

SMURF : I’m going to say... Alright - here’s the thing. The very fir - I’m going to go with the very first Wayhaught fanfic I’ve ever read, and that actually got me into reading and writing Wayhaught fanfic. Is that okay, is that acceptable?

DARKWICCAN : Of course! It’s you – there are no wrong answers to this question.

SMURF : Okay.  So, the first Wayhaught fic I’ve ever read was Small Town Gun by -

DARKWICCAN : Okay.

SMURF : Well, it’s by isawet on AO3, or SunSpill on Tumblr. She’s actually a good friend of mine now because of that fic. But, that is the first fic that I ever read for Wayhaught, and it was about Nicole, and it was about how she became the cop that she is right now. So, of course, it was something that really grabbed _my_ attention. But anyway, it’s because of that fic that I’m in this fandom. Well, I mean I was already watching the show, but, it’s because of that fic that I got into fic for this show. So, that’s going to be my choice. It has a special place in my heart.

DARKWICCAN : Heh, alright, so, Small Town Gun by SunSpill?

SMURF : Yeah. It’s SunSpill on Tumblr. It’s isawet on AO3.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome! I will provide a link to that in the episode notes, so that our listeners can look that one up already as well if they haven’t read it already. Okay, Pirate. You’re on the hot seat now.

PIRATE : Okay, well, I don’t have like a really cool, long explanation like everyone else. That’s fine. Whatever.

SMURF : Sorry…  

PIRATE : Well, so, like you changed the rules. But, mine was going to be Spooky Road Trip.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah. Go with that!

PIRATE : I can pick that, right?

DARKWICCAN : Yes you can.

PIRATE : Oh, okay.

DARKWICCAN : Smurf made her own rules.

PIRATE : Okay, so ha! Smurf. Yeah! So I picked Spooky Road Trip.

SMURF : Sorry!

DARKWICCAN : Spooky Road Trip by theGaySmurf.

PIRATE : Yeah, okay. It’s called You’re Going to Find Your Way Back Home.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

PIRATE : But, it’s really called Spooky Road Trip.

SMURF : No! I think pretty much everybody mostly knows it as Spooky Road Trip.

PIRATE : I pick Spooky Road Trip. Only - not only - but one of the reasons why is because I would love to see - hint, hint, nudge, nudge - the story of John Hicks Adams and Marisol. Any, any day now.

DARKWICCAN : Ooh. So do I.

PIRATE : I mean, I know all the notes, but, come on!

SMURF : Look at you. Look at you making more work for me.

DARKWICCAN : That’s what good co-writers do, right?

PIRATE : I don’t care.

SMURF : Yeah… yeah… Alright, maybe. Okay. I’ll put it on the list.

DARKWICCAN : Excellent. Excellent. Good work, Pirate.

PIRATE : Thank you. Rubbing the fan.

DARKWICCAN : Okay. Well, Pirate and Smurf, thank you so much for coming on and being our very first guests for our very first episode. It has been amazing speaking with you both. You are both such, such talented writers, and it is thrilling, uh, following the 80s Mixtape AU as you post singles every Friday.

PIRATE : Thanks for reading them.

SMURF : But really, literally, that’s -  

PIRATE : We’re just glad you like them.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, we like them. We really like them.

PIRATE : Yeah. That’s our first Sally Fields moment there.

DARKWICCAN : We love them. Very much - yes, very much Sally Fields moments, speaking of the 80s. Alright.

SMURF : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Well, thank you ladies so much. You have a wonderful rest of your day.

PIRATE : Thank you.

SMURF : Thanks for having us.

MUSIC : Don’t Deal With The Devil by Kristofer Maddigan.

DARKWICCAN : And that wraps it up for the inaugural episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thank you so much for joining us. Huge thanks to our guests, PirateKane and TheGaySmurf for being willing guinea pigs for our first interview segment. Thanks also to our announcer, Byron Tidwell, for our intro and our Fandras Fanbus promotional spot.

Background music for the episode was A Proper Story and A Spike In The Rail by Darren Korb. Instrumental 80s music from livebettermedia and the outro music is Don’t Deal With The Devil by Kristofer Maddigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast, you can find us on Twitter @EFA_Podcast and on Facebook at EFA Podcast. Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you’ll join us next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, read more fic!

 


	2. You Have the Right to Remain Awesome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We're back with our second episode! This week we put TheGaySmurf back in the hotseat to discuss her fic "I'm Ready (When You're Ready for Me)" aka "Haught's History"!

 

 

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/you-have-the-right-to-remain-awesome)

ORIGINAL AIR DATE: JAN 22, 2018

 

Read the Fic!: [I'm Ready, When You're Ready for Me](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8354329/chapters/19137553)

 

Transcript for the Deaf and HOH by Flying Fanatic

 

 

 

EFA EPISODE 02 – THE RIGHT TO REMAIN AWESOME

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid hosts DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody and welcome to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fiction, I am your host DarkWiccan and with me is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, I’m Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we are excited to be back for our second episode. Can you believe it? We already one episode in the can! It’s so incredible!

DELAYNE : I’m still sort of in awe, in shock, I – like what, we’re really doing this, this is crazy.

DARKWICCAN : Oh it’s real. It is very real. It is not a dream. So before I forget, there are a couple more little housekeeping things we need to take care of this week before we dive into the main focus of our episode this week.

DELAYNE : Go for it.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, well the first one is that we record our episodes six weeks in advance of the actual air date.

DELAYNE : That gives us time for, y’know, editing.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. Editing, production, and it also allows us to always have episodes in the library ready to go. So we’re not sort of rushing on a weekly basis to try to get a fic out – get a fic out [laughter]

DELAYNE : Sort of the same process.

DARKWICCAN : Sort of the same process. We’re not in a rush to try to get a podcast out in, like, under 48 hours or so. So to make sure that we always have content ready to go for you guys on a weekly basis we record six weeks out. So, that means that when an episode airs and we’re not talking about a specific fic, or we’re not talking about the most recent chapter, or many six weeks’ worth of chapters. It’s because they didn’t exist at the time that we recorded, so that’s just a little FYI. Little FYI for you guys there.

Another thing that we want to touch on before we move on to our main feature is, I’ve gotten a few questions as to how we choose what fics we’re recommending. And not just here on the podcast, but on our social media streams, on our Twitter, and our Facebook page. And so, Delayne and I, we went back and forth, actually had – I would this say this was a fairly serious conversation.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. We actually kind of - I know I hunched over my keyboard, ‘cause we were in chat right? So, I hunched over my keyboard and, y’know instead of like dropping into a deep and serious tone, it was more like I just physically did that, and hunched, and was like, “Here are the things that I think are important”. And you shared some of the things that you thought were important, and we kind of mushed them together, and came up with our basic requirements for recommending any fic.

And that is – and they’re very basic – that is that we need to see a clear story, with well-defined characters, and little to no grammatical, usage or punctuation errors. So, that’s just baseline. And that’s really – that’s not a high bar, would you say that’s a high bar?

DELAYNE : No, I mean my fics might be a little close on some of the grammar and punctuation, but sometimes I get _style_ . [coughing laughter] I focus on _style_ instead of – it’s not that funny, c’mon.

DARKWICCAN : No? But that’s why we read each other’s work – we beta each other, so, yeah. So if you want your fic to be recommended by us, it’s really not that difficult, just meet those baseline requirements, again, which is: clear story; well-defined characters; little to no grammatical usage or punctuation errors. So, just take that extra couple of hours, or minutes, to go in and proof-read your work before you post it. And I’ll say that –

DELAYNE : And a beta, to just double-check it real quick for you.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah! And you’ll notice that nothing within our basic requirements has anything to do with content. And that’s because we’re pretty much fine with whatever – with a few exceptions – as long as there is a disclaimer. Y’know, where appropriate.

DELAYNE : Well written tags.

DARKWICCAN : Well written tags are very good, the disclaimers are good. But yeah, as far as content, we know that there’s a wide variety of tastes and preferences out there, and so we’re not here to judge that, we’re just looking the basic – again, the basic requirements, the overall writing quality. Is it a well written story, regardless of what’s it about. Now, again, there are a few exceptions to the content, whatever’s clever, kind of rule.

But we’ll go into that in a FAQ that we’ll write up, and we’ll put on our website. And if you have – y’know, if you go and you read through this FAQ, and you’re like, “Hey, I think that is kind of unfair” please reach out to us. Reach out to us either by our Facebook or, via Twitter, ‘cause we welcome the dialogue, we want to have the conversation.

DELAYNE : Right? That’s what this is about, we are conversing, we are talking about fics.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, we’re conversing right now. So yeah, just wanted to kind of get those two bits of information out there. We record six weeks in advance, and our basic requirements for a fic we are going to recommend. So yeah, okay, wow, that felt really adult.

DELAYNE : Don’t worry, we’ll regress here shortly.

DARKWICCAN : Well, let’s get down to the regression. Okay, so, our focus this week is that super-popular, Nicole backstory fic by The Gay Smurf, colloquially known as Haught’s History, but the actual title is...?

DELAYNE : Hold on a minute. [laughter] I was not ready. But, the fic title is “I’m Ready (When You’re Ready For Me)”. Sorry.

DARKWICCAN : I think it’s really funny that you weren’t ready with the answer, which was “I’m Ready (When You’re Ready For Me)”. So Delayne, I know that this is a particularly favourite fic of yours. What about this fic had caused you to fall in love with it so much?

DELAYNE : Well, let’s go even further back, when I first started reading the fiction I was filtering for complete. I was generally reading the shorter stories. And so, I knew I was going to be stuck on an airplane for an extended period, and I was saving this Haught’s History for that, so that I could just load the whole thing, and when I was on airplane mode I wouldn’t have to switch chapters, or loose, or try and get on that blasted airplane Wi-Fi. And so, I started reading it, and really, once I got to Darlene - I mean, I was already hooked – but once I got to Darlene, I couldn’t. I think I had texted you almost immediately, and said you need to stop what you’re doing and read this now.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I remember getting that text. And I remember being in a place where I couldn’t stop what I was doing. But as soon as I got to a place where I could, I immediately dove into it. And I think for me, yeah, Darlene Ricketts, who makes an appearance kind of late in the –

DELAYNE : We’ll get there.

DARKWICCAN : We’ll get there, yeah. But I was hooked right away with Nicole’s grandparents. They are sort of the idealized representation of what we kind of hope all of our families could be like. I say that having a really awesome family, with awesome parents. And awesome grandparents.

DELAYNE : No-one in my family was surprised, so that was nice to see, that clearly they saw it coming.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, coming out?

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : But, y’know, a lot of people don’t have that positive experience, so I think it’s really awesome, and I love the way that Smurf framed it, that moment. And yeah, I have to agree, I kind of saw it coming too, and I didn’t think it was going to be cataclysmic, y’know, this cataclysmic event where all of the good was immediately wiped away with this horrible, angsty, dramatic turn, ‘cause that’s not the way that Smurf had set these characters up. But she is so excellent at shaping characters.

DELAYNE : It is, it’s those tiny details, so it’s the tiny details in the characters, the whole cast of all of these background characters, it all just comes out so well, that it’s like a movie. When you can picture it so easily, you know it’s a good fic.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, absolutely. When the characters kind of come off the page, fully-formed, as complete human beings, as total people, and you can tell that have – even if you don’t know what it is – but you can tell that have a rich personal history, and backstory, even if we’re never privy to what that might be.

DELAYNE : But it almost makes you want to know it.

DARKWICCAN : But it makes want to know. Oh, man, I want to dig into this person. Like Darlene Ricketts! How on earth did she become the way that she is? Y’know?

DELAYNE : I have some family members, and I have a few theories. But that’s neither here nor there. Another great overall thing about this fic is that while it’s behind the scenes, y’know, it is canon – or as canon as it was for season one – it’s not just a re-hash of the canon scene, with just some extra, sort of, internal dialogue. It is – ‘cause we don’t actually get to episode two, where Nicole and Waverly meet, until chapter six.

DARKWICCAN : Right, and all of that, up to that point, is Smurf just sort of world-building. One thing I really love is Nicole’s constant internal monologue.

DELAYNE : She has – that is the thing, that while these behind the scenes fics, that it is that internal dialogue – Nicole’s internal dialogue is fricking fantastic.

DARKWICCAN : And frequently hilarious.

DELAYNE : Oh, my gosh. Sorry, once you get to the “What. The. Fuck. [...] Did. You. Just. Say?????” that she does to herself.

DARKWICCAN : The bar scene, when –

DELAYNE : I need to screen capture that, and put it on the background of my phone. So I can see that all the time.

DARKWICCAN : The way that Smurf framed it out, where it was just one word, period, new line, next word, period, new line, new line, next word. “What. The. Fuck. [...] Did. You. Just.”

DELAYNE : I love that so much.

DARKWICCAN : It’s so great. And if you watch the scene, if you like compare notes, y’know, if you watch the scene, and you sort of interject Nicole’s thoughts into the actual acted scene with Kat and Dom, you can kind of see these moments of like, “oh, oh, you’re blowing it, quick, pick it up, pick it up, you got this, like say something not stalk-y, I’m not stalking you, c’mon”.

But I mean, even beyond the bar scene here, she does have this sort of rolling internal monologue, and it’s frequently hilarious, but often there are moments where she’s really having to gin herself up, gin up her courage, and she draws on past experiences, y’know, with her grandparents, and those are really kind of, those are very sweet, and deep kind of moments that I really, really love, if you can’t tell.

DELAYNE : And it’s not just the ones with her grandparents. _All_ of the flashbacks are just paired so nicely, it really, y’know, whatever triggers that memory in Nicole, it is unbelievable how it just flows so well, and it really brings you into that past, and her experience, and why she would feel or react a way that she would, and then brings you right back. It’s just absolutely amazing.

DARKWICCAN : It really is. She is – and I think that is all comes from Smurf’s supreme and eloquent attention to detail. And it really brings a depth of reality, y’know, that you don’t get very often.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I’m still in awe, like, oh my gosh.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, I frequently find myself trying to pick my jaw up off the floor when reading any of Smurf’s works. She’s very detail-oriented. And love the fact that she is a retired law-enforcement officer, who was a deputy in a small town in the middle of Farmville, U.S.A. So, she kind of was Nicole, right? I mean, she kind of was –

DELAYNE : She is the best person to get into Nicole’s head, I mean.

DARKWICCAN : She truly is. She truly is. And I love all the details, all of the law enforcement procedural stuff. I love it, ‘cause you can tell it is authentic, it is the real deal. Like, when she’s getting in an out of the car, the patrol car, and I don’t really know entirely what the codes mean, I sort of infer what that codes mean, but like when she says, ‘I’m 10-23 at location,” which means, I think it means she’s getting out of the car, and then when she’s done at the location and she’s getting back in the car she says, “I’m 10-24”. And I’m just like, “oh, my god, you don’t get that, kind of.” It’s a little, little detail, but it’s so vitally important, and it tells such a huge part of the story!

DELAYNE : Sorry, I’m still just flabbergasted, if you can’t tell. Y’know, it might not be necessary for some folks to put that in, or maybe some people are okay with it not being in, but it adds so much, for being such a little, tiny detail.

DARKWICCAN : It really does. Again, it just adds that air of authenticity, like this is a – Nicole is a cop, and she’s a real cop, and she’s a really good cop.

DELAYNE : Doing real cop things!

DARKWICCAN : Doing real cop things, and I love that Smurf writes her as a good cop. Not just like morally good, but really good and competent at her job, because y’know I’ve seen quite a few fics out there that typically have that tag, y’know, “Nicole is literally the worst cop” and, I was kind of, y’know, and typically – not to say that there are anything wrong with those fics, they’re enjoyable, it doesn’t mean that the fic itself doesn’t have value, but I always kind of wrinkle my eyebrows a little bit at that. ‘Cause it’s like, but no, she’s not. I mean, I think if anything, even the series, especially the series, has made it very clear that Nicole is an excellent cop.

DELAYNE : Right? I mean why else would Nedley –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, why else would Nedley –

DELAYNE : He clearly had recruited her and plans to mentor her, I mean that is made obvious in canon.

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely! And she wouldn’t be – she wouldn’t have been at the top of class at the academy if she was crap. I think one of the reasons why Nedley – and this is me sort of doing headcanon work here – but I think one of the reasons why Nedley worked so hard to recruit her was not only at the top of her class, but also, there’s a little bit of a struggle there, as a female, even if she’s at the top of her class, doesn’t mean that she’s going to get the same attention as say the guy who came in right behind her in second place. So, Nedley saw something in her and was like, “I want her for my department, I’m going to fight for her to get into my department” and placed a degree of value on her that, even being at the top of the class, she might not have gotten like say in a city, in a city office.

DELAYNE : Right.

DARKWICCAN : Well, good, I’m glad you agree with me. What other stuff about Haught’s History do you love? I mean, I’m sitting just rattling my ass off.

DELAYNE : Oh, I have so many notes. The librarian. “You’re one of those.” And of course Nicole’s first instinct is, “Wait a minute, one of _those?_ ”

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, like, what exactly do you mean by that? She’s like, “am I blushing in rainbow?”

DELAYNE : Another great thing that Smurf does is setting up stuff that we see in canon, especially in that first six chapters, when Nicole’s snide remark about Champ’s truck, “is that Waverly’s boyfriend? Unfortunately” she did such an awesome job, really showing why she would have such a snide – I mean, more than just, “oh I think Waverly’s cute,” but “ugh, that’s Champ.” Yeah, unfortunately, that is Waverly’s boyfriend.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, he was. Oh. Was being the key word.

DELAYNE : But that’s why I love this so much, and why I love Smurf so much, is this – I mean, it’s more than just back – I mean, there’s so much backstory, and it’s just such a massive world, and it all fits together beautifully. And it blows my mind away when you get these little breadcrumbs, and it leads up to oh yeah, that’s fricking brilliant!

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and again, _again_ , I know that we just keep kind of banging this drum, but it just goes back to her attention to detail, and her ability to world-build.

DELAYNE : We love Smurf! We love Smurf!

DARKWICCAN : We love Smurf! We should just chant this. We love Smurf! We love Smurf!

DELAYNE : She’s going to be so mad.

DARKWICCAN : She’s going to be so angry. She’s just going to sitting there going, “What.” Well, I’m sorry, Smurf, that’s what you get, when you’re brilliant. You get laudits, and praise, and love, so just take it, and deal with it. So, what else did you – I know you’ve got massive notes, dig into them some more, what else have you got in your notebook?

DELAYNE : Calamity Jane. I know everyone sort of has their headcanon about Calamity Jane. I have my own, which will appear in a fic, someday, but I think that’s adorable, the little kitten was rescued from the dumpster, and the payment for rescuing was the kitten, was the kitten.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I too, I love the idea that Nicole didn’t come into town with Calamity Jane. I love the idea that she’s a rescue from within the town.

DELAYNE : That actually, I just, ding, lightbulb. I had a ginger cat that my dad rescued from the town drunk, and we named him Larry, after the town drunk. So we had a yellow cat named Larry.

DARKWICCAN : Did he have a brother Daryl, and another brother Daryl?

DELAYNE : [laughter] No. But –

DARKWICCAN : For the young ‘uns out there, that was a callback to _The Bob Newhart Show_.

DELAYNE : Yeah, there – you’re getting corked eyebrows right, you probably –

DARKWICCAN : And they’re like, “wait, the who?” You know, the Jedi master on _The Big Bang Theory_ for Sheldon. Bob Newhart. But we’re – sorry, I totally took us off topic, I apologise. Please continue.

DELAYNE : I started breaking it down by chapter, even. The deputy – the dispatch from the other office, Sharon.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, my god, Sharon. Oh, oh, Smurf wrote Sharon so well, I hate Sharon.

DELAYNE : Right? I mean, just these little random side characters, but they give us – she gives us a villain, that we all can be like, ugh, Sharon, what is your problem?

DARKWICCAN : Sharon, you suck. But only because you’re written so well.

DELAYNE : But I mean, y’know, Ruthie has her back, too.

DARKWICCAN : Ruthie has Nicole’s back.

DELAYNE : Becoming part of the team.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Yeah.

DELAYNE : Yeah. Ruthie is showing that, “we got you, Nicole, you’re one of us, don’t worry.”

DARKWICCAN : Oh, man. And I love that, again, these peripheral characters that Smurf created, y’know, the other guys in the station, the other officers, when they – when Nicole survives her hazing with Darlene Ricketts, how they’re like, “okay, you’re one of us now, let’s go to wing night.” I really liked how accepting they were when they either figured out at that moment, or had an idea for a while and just hadn’t said anything, that Nicole’s, y’know –

DELAYNE : Well one of them was looking at her earlier in the chapter, like mmhm, and she noticed he was still watching her, so one of them was picking up on it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I think it was Stanton, that was picking up on it, initially. But I just love that they are like, “we may be small town hicks, but give us some credit.” Y’know, that they’re cool with her being gay. And being gay, and female gay, in a small town, is not typically easy situation, so, again, Smurf is giving us that scenario that a lot of people wish that they had in their work experience.

DELAYNE : Right, and I’m very lucky, I did grow up in a fairly small town, probably why I waited until college to figure it out for myself.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I was going to say, wait a minute, you didn’t just wait to come out the closet, you waited to open the dialogue internally before you -

DELAYNE : Right? Exactly. That’s how – so I know how small towns go, very much so. I mean, that cliffhanger, though. She’s very [inaudible] isn’t she? Oh, like why, ugh! You’re killing me.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, it’s like uh, what? And then of course, we find out. Sorry, spoiler alert. Oh, dang it. What am I doing? Speaking of cliff-hangers, at the time of this episode recording, Smurf has left us with a pretty, pretty crazy cliff-hanger, that I didn’t see coming, did you?

DELAYNE : No, no, ‘cause I think when I read it, I think I’d pretty much caught up to fifteen and so, when sixteen was released, oh I’m super excited, and then it’s like, it went so quick, and then it just was like, “Wait, I want more!”

DARKWICCAN : Like, “You can’t leave it there!”

DELAYNE : “Don’t leave me hanging!”

DARKWICCAN : “You’ve left thousands of readers on the verge of apoplexy, you can’t do that! Come back!” But then again, writing is hard, and it’s never fair to put that kind of pressure on a writer, but I’m sure she’s working on something, that she’ll get posted eventually. And it’ll be totally worth the wait, absolutely worth the wait. But you know what? We can ask her about it. Because...

DELAYNE : Yes!

DARKWICCAN : ...we roped her into another interview! And this is one that, Delayne, you get to stick around for.

DELAYNE : I’m super excited.

DARKWICCAN : I am also super excited. Oh man. Well, before we get –

DELAYNE : I’m so sad when I missed –

DARKWICCAN :  Oh, that makes two of us. It felt really weird, you not being part of that interview. So I’m glad that you’re here for this one.

DELAYNE : We got the technical difficulties all ironed out.

DARKWICCAN : We did, we got that fixed, and that hopefully will not happen again. But before we get into segment two, [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : A Cowboy Reborn by Bytheway-May

DARKWICCAN : Welcome back everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction, I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my co-host –

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we are super excited because we managed to rope this gal back in for another interview, in less than a week’s time. I am personally impressed with our ability to negotiate, how about you, Delayne?

DELAYNE : _Your_ ability, DW, is the best. You really rock at this.

DARKWICCAN : I just have this thing where I just go to people and go, “Hey, you do this cool thing, would you do this cool thing for me?” And sometimes, sometimes, they say yes, and in this instance I’m thrilled that she said yes. Welcome back to the podcast, The Gay Smurf. Hello, Smurf.

SMURF : Hello.

DARKWICCAN : We are super excited to have you back on, to talk about Haught’s History.

SMURF : Haught’s History.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : The actual name... [laughter]

SMURF : It’s called “I’m Ready (When You’re Ready For Me)”.

DARKWICCAN : I think the secondary title has sort of taken on a life of it’s own, and so now we primarily refer to it as Haught’s History. And, y’know, sometimes, when I’m looking for updates, and I see on AO3 that you’ve posted an update to “I’m Ready For You” [sic] it honestly takes me a second ‘cause I’m like, “Oh, is that a new one? Look at how many chapters there are already, that’s great”. And I click through, I’m like, “Oh, wait, no, this is Haught’s History”. And it’s always a pleasant surprise.

SMURF : Yes. Well, that’s good.

DARKWICCAN : Well, since you’ve let us put you on the hot seat once again, Smurf, we won’t tarry too long here. Let’s – Delayne, you want to go ahead and jump into our questions?

DELAYNE : I can do that, since I’m actually here and participating this time. Very exciting.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yes. Folks if you missed episode one, we had some technical difficulty and unfortunately Delayne couldn’t join us for the interview with Pirate and Smurf, but I’m thrilled that she’s with me today, I feel like I’m not missing an arm, or something more vital, like a kidney or something.

DELAYNE : I don’t know how I feel about that statement right now. So let’s go ahead, and get to the questions. So, dear Smurf –

SMURF : Yes?

DELAYNE : Based on your notes, you said this started out as a single scene, and then spiraled. So, what was that original missing scene you started with?

SMURF : Okay, well, the initial idea for this was born from the scene in the barn, in 111, when Waverly sends Nicole away to wait for her outside, and she deals with Willa, and then we pick up again with them later in the barn. That scene, it always really felt to me like it was picking up in the middle of something, like maybe there was a conversation, the beginning of the conversation that we hadn’t seen, that was already in progress.

And it kind of got me wondering what might have been going through Nicole’s head, as she left the house, and walked across the yard to wait in the barn for Waverly. So, it made me want to write a little missing scene, to fill in that gap and show where Nicole’s head was when it picks up, when Waverly says, “I’m exhausted.” But once I started thinking about it, it kind of all went downhill after that.

DARKWICCAN : Uphill!

DELAYNE : Uphill!

SMURF : Well, yeah, very much uphill. More and more scenes just kept working their way into my head and I could see them playing out, clear as day, one right after another. And at that point I finally just gave in and admitted to myself that I was seeing Nicole’s entire story unfolding right in front of me. And I mean, really, who’s going to tell Nicole no, right?

DARKWICCAN : An idiot, an idiot would tell Nicole no. Yeah, so good for you for not doing that.

SMURF : And so now it’s grown into this massive thing, so. But, that’s the origin, it’s the barn. You can blame it on the barn.

DARKWICCAN : I think what you’ve described is something that’s fairly common with a lot of fic writers, where you start off on one foot, and you’re like, “Okay, I’ve got this brief little idea, it’s a tiny, little one-shot, I’m just going to whip this out and post it, and be done with it and move on with my life.” And then it becomes this monster.

SMURF : Yeah, apparently my brain doesn’t know how to do one-shots.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, well, I’m grateful, I’m grateful that it became the sweeping story that it’s become.

SMURF : Well, okay.

DARKWICCAN : So, as you realized that this was huge, and that you had to answer this call to start writing it, and you started to bring in all of these elements of sort of Nicole’s history, you really made the grandparents, Nicole’s grandparents, a key element to her, to who she is as an adult. So, I just have to ask, are Nicole’s grandparents based on your own?

SMURF : Well, the short answer is no. Though I will say that her grandmother does have a lot of my grandma in her. But, really, I wanted to give Nicole a coming out, and support, and accepting that a lot of us don’t get, but we kind of dream about having. So, I gave her parents, and grandparents, and family, and all of that, that sort of a lot of us wish we could have, so that’s kind of where that was born from.

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely. Following up from that a little bit, where did the nickname “Hawk” come from?

SMURF : Well, that was actually – I did research for that. Imagine, imagine there was research involved. I mean, I told a little bit of it in that first chapter, the orange hawkweed. It grows where I said that their ranch was, in Wyoming, and it’s a beautiful, bright, orange colour, and so I kind of ran with that, with it being something that reminded her grandma, it reminded her of her hair, so that’s where “Hawk” came from. I used it a little bit at the first, but then I realized that I really liked it, so I started using it a lot. So now it’s kind of become a part of her now, so.

DELAYNE : The botanist in me absolutely adores this nickname, by the way.

SMURF : Well, good.

DELAYNE : ‘Cause I have actually done work on hawkweed, of course we were – it’s an invasive species – so we were trying to control it.

SMURF : Well, so that was another thing I liked about it it, it’s very stubborn, and it’s very resilient, and it comes back, so I kind of felt like that sort of went with her character too. Y’know, she gets knocked down a lot, but she always gets back up and she doesn’t let it keep her out, so.

DARKWICCAN : I love that it comes from a true inspiration within the story, ‘cause I was curious if it was something from your life. I know some authors, not all, but some authors will trickle in elements of their own lives, into the fics that they –

DELAYNE : Some, like me, trickle in way too much.

SMURF : There is plenty of that in here too. But, the “Hawk” thing is actually unique to Nicole. I wanted to choose something – I always knew that I wanted her grandma to have a special nickname for her, but then it sort of took on a life of it’s own, when I found something that really fit Nicole’s personality and character. But also fit the location where they were and everything. So, it’s hers, it’s all hers.

DARKWICCAN : That’s so cool. That’s so cool.

DELAYNE : So, most importantly for me, one of my favourite characters, I want to know, will we see Darlene Rickett again?

SMURF : Oh, Darlene. Y’know, I laugh at how much everybody liked her character, ‘cause honestly, she still haunts me to this day.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, you need to extrapolate on that a little bit. Are you saying that this is based on an actual person that you dealt with when you were in law enforcement?

SMURF : Oh yes, that entire call was based on a call that I went on in real life. The names are changed, and a little bit of the details, but generally speaking, that is a real thing that really happened.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] I’m sorry, that must have been so awful at the time.

SMURF : It was, it was – she haunts me to this day. I can close my eyes and I still see that entire scene. Her sprawled out on the tractor in the front yard, and the house with the food everywhere, and the things that she said to me and my fellow deputies, I will never forget those things. So, I decided that it would be fun to make Nicole go through that too.

DELAYNE : It was genius, it was a great way for her, y’know, induction into the group.

SMURF : Oh yeah, I figured that would be a fun one to be her initiation, because I mean really, when are you ever going to have another call like that again?

DARKWICCAN : You figured right, it’s absolutely hilarious. Yeah, no kidding.

SMURF : But so, yes, I think it’s safe to say that “Big Red” has not had her last run-in with Darlene and Larry Rickett.

DELAYNE : That makes me so happy.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, god. So, this, so Darlene is an element, or a riff on an actual experience from when you were a law enforcement officer. And one thing that I know a lot of people really love about Haught’s History is how much of actual police work you incorporate into the storytelling. And I’m just curious, what’s been your favourite elements of law enforcement procedure to incorporate into the story? Maybe something that has been missing from the series itself, or maybe mistakes you keep seeing happen in other fics, where somebody tries to write Nicole as a cop, and doesn’t really get it right, or does it in the wrong order?

SMURF : Well, I will say this about the show: they, for a small show, set in a small town, they really do get most of it right, as far as procedure goes. I mean, as much as you can, when you’re cramped for time and space, in episodes and things like that. Anyway, I’m not really sure if it’s the kind of thing where I can narrow it down to just one thing.

I mean, the overall answer is, authenticity and accuracy, the little things, I like to be able to give her the little things. The way her squad car is laid out, and how her radios operate, the way the dispatching is handled, the actual procedures when she’s handling casework, like how she conducts her interviews, and using the CPIC computer system for searches, things like licence plates and criminal histories. Describing what it’s like when she has to draw her weapon, and what she feels like when she’s an adrenaline situation like that.

What it was like clearing the scene after the hostage situation, and even things like re-citing the statutes when she made her first arrest with – and walking you guys through the booking process, with Darlene. That’s something that a lot of people really realise, how that works. You know, you always see the big call, and making the arrest, but nobody really knows what happens after. So I wanted to give you guys a detailed look at how booking works, when she took her in and there was the fingerprints, and the search, and taking them to the cell, and all of that.

So that – these are all things that I’ve loved being able to incorporate into the story, because Nicole’s career is so important to her, I feel like it’s a really big part of her character, even though they don’t always have time to show it on screen. So, I feel like being able to write about this stuff is a way for me to bring that aspect to life for her, a little bit.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and it’s – you’re absolutely right, and it is so cool, it is absolutely so cool, to get this insight into how actual police work works, y’know, cause you just don’t get that. I mean, like you said, it’s great that the show is as accurate as they can be, considering that they’re dealing with supernatural elements, and the focus isn’t really on the sheriff’s department, y’know, it’s more on goo related stuff, and they can’t really dwell too much on procedure, but even so. I know I’m not in law enforcement, never been in it, but I know that I get frustrated watching cop procedural shows and going “That just doesn’t seem right.”

SMURF : Oh, yeah, there’s plenty of them out there that I watch, and I’m just like, “Oh, I can’t even watch this.” So, I’m going to give them props for that. Obviously, there are a few things that have to be kind of stretched, and turned, or glossed over because of time, or because of the way they’re, like you said, dealing with supernatural things, and they can’t really put the whole focus on it. But given what they have to work with, I’ve always been really impressed with the way they handle procedure with what they have to work with.

Honestly, there haven’t been a whole lot of things that I’ve had to fix when I’m writing. I add to, and expand, but there hasn’t really been anything that I’ve had to, sort of, y’know, fix, yet, anyway.

DARKWICCAN : Well, hopefully, after your conversation with Kat herself, and how thrilled she was when you told her what – well, you tell us about it, I don’t need to tell you [inaudible]

DELAYNE : Feel free to elaborate on that, ‘cause that was awesome.

SMURF : Well, yeah, it was – I’m still, I can’t even realise that it really happened, but, yeah, I mean we were sitting there, and talking, and she asked me a bunch of questions about police stuff, and she was really interested in the things I had to say about the way they handle procedure.

And like, the Nedley character, I really like him, because so many, in these shows, when you have – when it’s set in a small town, and you have a small town kind of old boys club sheriff, especially if it’s something then where you have the feds coming in, and there’s kind of the whole, y’know, jurisdictional pissing match. They like to make the sheriff, y’know, a bumbling idiot. Like, oh, this small town bumpkin doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground, they’re just stupid up here. And I really hate when shows do that, because, I mean, not all small town sheriff departments are like that. But I love the Nedley character, and I love that he does the best that he can with his job, and the way he interacts with Nicole.

So Kat was talking to me about that, she wanted to know what I thought of the Nedley character, so, I was telling her how much I liked him, and how much I appreciated the way that they take the sheriff’s department serious on the show, even if it’s not the centre of the focus. But it was amazing, just talking to her about it was just amazing, really.

DELAYNE : For the bumbling deputy, they brought Lonnie in for that.

SMURF : Well, yeah, I mean you got to have a little bit of the comic relief. And there are some idiots that get hired by their uncle, just because they happen to know people, or whatever. But, I just, I was really glad that the sheriff himself wasn’t that way, because at least he is a good cop, with a good head on his shoulders, and he runs his department the best he can. As opposed to having some idiot in office, so we’re just like, everybody that works for him doesn’t know what they’re doing.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I think Randy Nedley is the, in many ways the MVP of the later half of this most recent season.

SMURF : You know, he reminds me a lot of my field training officer, and I don’t know, you can probably tell when I’m writing him in the story, the way that he, like, we’re still fairly early in Nicole’s story, in Haught’s History right now, so, as, you know, she’s still a pretty fresh rookie and he’s really trying to be a mentor to her, and I try to bring that across, because he reminds me so much of my field training officer. And I like to be able to put a lot of his traits and personalities, and some of the things that I’ve had him said to Nicole were things that were actually said to me, so, actual conversations that we had. The hostage chapter –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, that’s neat.

SMURF : - the thing that he says, y’know, “Just slow down, we’re in a hurry,” that’s something –

DELAYNE : I could read that in the notes.

SMURF : Yeah, that’s something that he said to me on the first call that we went on, that was more of a, like a high speed type call, not just, “Oh, we’re just going to go take this report on so-and-so’s car has got vandalized”, or whatever, it was the first time we were going actually into a real time call. That was some things that he said to me, and I wanted to bring that in, to use for Nicole, because she was, y’know, worked up because you’re going into a hostage situation. I mean, you talk about going to your first call, and then it’s something like that, too, I mean, that’s like way on the other end of the spectrum. So, I wanted to be able to use him to say some of the things I’ve been told.

And the conversation afterwards, y’know the first time that something goes kind of bad, when he’s in her office – when she’s in his office later, the next day, and he’s trying to calm her down, and he tells her that, y’know, stuff like this happens, you can’t let it get to you, you have to – it’s not your fault, you have to be able to move on, that’s part of being able to do the job.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, ‘cause I mean I’ve got to agree with you, where you had said in your post chapter notes, you said “You cannot convince me that Nicole wasn’t deeply affected by Shorty’s death,” y’know, losing Shorty. And I completely agree, ‘cause it was her first call, and she is that type of person who – she feels it deep.

SMURF : She does, she takes it very seriously, and I think she didn’t really know him very well yet, but he was a guy that she’s met, it wasn’t just some random person, I mean, it’s somebody she knew. And they lost him, and it wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t any of their faults, but, it’s hard not to carry that with you the first time something like that happens to you.

Which is why I let her have a little bit of a crisis that night, where she was trying to decide, maybe I can’t do this. But then, y’know, seeing her badge, and hearing her grandfather’s words in her head, and she was like “No, no, this is definitely for me I’m going to stick it out.”

I wanted to give her that moment, because I think every single one of us has had at least one moment where we question, y’know, something bad happens, or you lose somebody, or anything like that, and it makes you question, y’know, is this really what I want to do, but...

DELAYNE : Yeah, I totally get it, I just got a promotion at work, and it’s like, do I really deserve this? I can totally understand that.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I think we’ve all had that crossroads moment for sure.

DELAYNE : So, now that we know what’s going on with more of Nicole’s backstory because of season two, how is this going to affect how you approach your chapters from now on, if at all?

SMURF : Well, you see, the problem with season two is Emily forgot to run it by me first.

[gales of laughter]

DELAYNE : That is the best answer ever.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah.

SMURF : I have this whole story, backstory, origin, family, all of this planned out for Nicole, in meticulous detail, and then she goes along and does something like throws a secret marriage in, and I’m like, the hell am I supposed to work with that? [laughter]

Anyway, she didn’t get the memo, so, okay, no, in serious though, it’s not really going to affect my approach, because I’ve already built her entire life for her, and there’s not really anything I can do to change it now. We obviously – I’m committed to it already, y’know, we’re all committed to it, because we’re deep enough into it. We won’t be encountering a Shae, or secret marriage type situation, it’s far too late for me to introduce such a major event like that, into the history that’s already been established. Y’know, same with any sort of mysterious association with the cult, y’know, obviously I’ve already given her a family, and relationships, and the whole bit.

Unfortunately, you guys are just going to have to continue getting the backstory that I already had built for her, rather than the new one that was introduced in the back half of season two. If we ever do a project like this for season two, then maybe I’ll start her with a fresh slate, and give her what Emily gave her, but for now, you’re stuck with my Nicole, sorry.

DARKWICCAN : Well, I think –

DELAYNE : I don’t consider it stuck.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, no, I think that I’m reasonably confident in speaking for your readers and our listeners and saying that we are completely and totally fine with that.

SMURF : Okay. Well, that’s good.

DARKWICCAN : I like your Haught’s History, I like the background you’ve given her, it’s really rich and evocative, I like it a lot.

SMURF : Well, good. There’s a lot more of it to come too, we haven’t seen all of the flashbacks. I mean, there’s still plenty of stuff to learn about her too. You can look forward to that too.

DARKWICCAN : [sings] Awesome! [laughter] So, something that’s kind of been on my mind, especially since I did a re-read prior to this interview, as all good journalists should, I noticed that Nicole is a really capable detective, and I mean I noticed this the first time through, she is a smart cookie, she’s sharp, she is tuned into the scenario. She’s really quick at being able to tell when someone’s trying to pull something over on her, or when someone’s being sincere but maybe holding something a little back.

She’s really sharp, but when she takes off the Stetson at the end of the day, or when she’s dealing casually with folks, especially Waverly. Of course, I know Waverly’s kind of unique, but it seems like she kind of struggles a little bit to be able to tell when she’s being teased, or even just to be able to keep her gay shit together when she’s talking to Waverly. [laughter]

So, is this something that you’ve found is typical of just law enforcement folks in general, where they’re, when they’re on the duty they’re really sharp and keyed in, but then they go off duty, or they’re in a casual situation, and they kind of, they go a little soft around the edges?

SMURF : Well, I’m going to kind of disagree with you at little bit on this one.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, absolutely. Yeah, fair enough.

SMURF : I mean, I understand that you’re saying that she’s, y’know, she’s terrible at reading people, but I’m assuming you’re referring to the most recent encounters with Waverly, like the last two chapters, three chapters, probably.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, especially this last chapter –

SMURF : Well, yeah, obviously, ‘cause, and, yeah. And I left you on a cliffhanger there, so, there’s fun with that. The thing with Nicole is she, I mean, she does, she reads others quite well, she’s good with Nedley, and she’s good with the guys she works with, and she’s good with people in town, like Mama Lou, and the kids at the park.

But Waverly is different than anyone else that Nicole interacts with. I mean, she’s normally cool and confident, but Waverly turns her world upside down. Y’know, so – [coughs]

DARKWICCAN : Can you blame her?

SMURF : No. No. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that she doesn’t read Waverly well though, because she does. She reads her at the bar, when they first meet, and she read her at the grocery store, with that scene that I gave them there. Y’know, she could tell that when she flirted a little. And she read Waverly better than anyone else in the entire room when they were at Shorty’s wake.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely.

SMURF : If you’re talking about the latest interaction with Waverly, specifically this most recent chapter, you have to think about all the other extra things that are going on for her right now. Especially the fact that it’s a little different when she’s flirting with her and gets a little flustered, or something like that, but this is – she really thinks that she’s failed Waverly, and that she’s crossed a line. And that’s something that has her really upset, because it’s something that she never wanted to do. So, it’s – there’s so much that’s throwing her off her game at this moment, and that can happen to anybody, not just Nicole or not just law enforcement. But you also have to remember, you guys still haven’t seen the other half of that conversation yet. So...

DARKWICCAN : That’s true.

SMURF : You don’t know yet, what’s going to come yet from the encounter at Shorty’s, once Waverly finally gets a chance to speak. So, once she does, things are going to become more clear for both of them, and then you’ll see how things are different between them going forward, after that whole thing’s wrapped up. So –

DARKWICCAN : Okay. Yeah, that’s, that’s absolutely, yeah –

SMURF : But there, then the second part of your question there, when you asked me if it has to do with law enforcement. In relation to her job, though, it’s really too difficult to separate her job from her interpersonal skills, because her job _is_ interpersonal. She needs to use her skills when assessing situations, and when she’s handling anxious witnesses, or if she’s subduing agitated subjects, and she does it well.

She does it so well that she was able to pin Wynonna down in minutes, I mean far quicker than most people in Wynonna’s life. Like, look how quickly she read Wynonna the night after the hostage situation, when she comes back into the store. And the next day at the wake, before they go inside. And she’s already starting to see right through Wynonna, where other people can’t see past the gruff exterior that she puts up.

So, I think Nicole reads people pretty well, I think she’s just a little off her game right now because she feels like she has failed, or pushed Waverly, and it’s got her really upset, so she’s not – she kind of panicked, basically, I think is the best way to put it – she panicked, because she thinks that she’s done something wrong, and she wants to, y’know, give Waverly her space.

But, you guys just have to be patient and find out what Waverly’s going to say in response to that, so.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and -

DELAYNE : Do we have to be patient? I mean, I’m willing, but...

DARKWICCAN : How patient do we need to be, can you give us an idea? Like weeks’ worth of patience, months’ worth of patience?

SMURF : I am currently working on a chapter, but I can’t tell you a timeframe because there’s a lot that goes into stuff like that, so.

DARKWICCAN : Oh sure, absolutely. Absolutely.

DELAYNE : Good point. I have no right to question anyone’s timeline.

DARKWICCAN : And I stand thoroughly, thoroughly corrected, and more than happily dressed down, in my assessment of Nicole.

SMURF : No, sorry, I didn’t mean to – to come across that way, just –

DARKWICCAN : [laughing] You didn’t, you didn’t, I’m – I’m teasing you, Smurf.

SMURF : I’m just trying to give you an insight into Nicole’s behavior and actions, because obviously you can’t see inside her head like I can, so I’m just, I’m telling you.

DARKWICCAN : And I appreciate being told, thank you. I love how passionate you are, I love how passionate you are, that, and it –

DELAYNE : And it comes across in the writing. It really does.

DARKWICCAN : - It comes across in the writing. It absolutely does come across in the writing.

SMURF : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : Okay. So, you remember from your time on here with Pirate –

SMURF : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - That we have a final question, that we ask. Well -

SMURF : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Because you’ve already answered this question, we’re not going to ask that one, but we’re going to ask another one.

SMURF : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : So, sorry to put you on the hot seat here, but hopefully this isn’t too much -

SMURF : You know it sounds “sorry”. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : I admit nothing! I admit nothing. Okay, so the question is – it’s another desert island question. You are stranded on a desert island, and you can have only one member of the _Wynonna Earp_ cast with you; who is it?

SMURF : Well, Kat, obviously.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Obviously, Kat. And that’s not just because you’ve already had a conversation with her, and you have a rapport established?

SMURF : Well, I mean – I admit nothing.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Fair enough.

DELAYNE : Question answered. So hurrah.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, well, Smurf, thank you so much for coming back on a second time, we really, really appreciate it, and this has been a _wonderful_ chat.

SMURF : Well, thank you for having me.

DARKWICCAN : We’ll set you free from this hostage situation –

[gales of laughter]

SMURF : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : Thanks again for coming on, and I cannot wait to read the next chapter of Haught’s History, also known as I’m Ready (When You’re Ready For Me).

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks again for taking the time out of your day to listen to our little show.

Enormous thanks to The Gay Smurf for yet again taking time out of her busy schedule to be our guest. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro, and to Barb and Dot Mackenzie for the EHCon Canada spot.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Flower Dance by Eric Barone; A Cowboy Reborn by Bytheway-May; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast
> 
> We're also on iTunes!


	3. Let's Get Lyrical, Lyrical

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's episode three and time to pepper up this show with a little spice! [eyebrow_waggle.gif]
> 
>  
> 
> This week we chat about the "WayHaught Character Studies" by tigerlo!

 

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/lets-get-lyrical-lyrical)

ORIGINAL AIR DATE: JAN 29, 2018

 

Read the Fics!: [Nicole](http://archiveofourown.org/series/827586%C2%A0%20) \- [Waverly](http://archiveofourown.org/series/866724)

 

 

tigerlo's "Desert Island" fic: ["The Fatal Plunge" Series by maleficently](http://archiveofourown.org/series/29748)

 

Transcript for the Deaf and HOH by Flying Fanatic

 

 

EFA EPISODE 03 – LET’S GET LYRICAL

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody and welcome to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction, I am your host DarkWiccan and with me is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : Three episodes in! This is our third episode!

DELAYNE : Wow.

DARKWICCAN : I just can’t believe how fast this is coming, it’s kind of mind-blowing, a little bit. I mean, I know probably to our listeners, they’re like, “Yeah, so what, three episodes, whoop” but like –

DELAYNE : With all the planning, and the background...

DARKWICCAN : All the stuff that goes into it, it seems bigger, I guess, from this side of the mic.

DELAYNE : A little more involved, definitely.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, definitely. But, you know what? The good thing is this is only our third episode, so we’re still working out our kinks, and it’s giving us a chance to sort of address stuff that maybe we forgot before. Like, you pointed out to me that maybe gosh, golly, gee whiz, it might be a good idea to provide some definitions for terms that we’ve been using, for folks who might not be active or avid fanfiction readers, or who haven’t gotten into reading fanfiction yet.

DELAYNE : Yes. It took a while, I remember, when I first started joining a fandom, and it’s like, wait, I had to Google a lot of stuff. I still have to Google a lot of stuff, honestly.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, me too, I am a huge fan of The Google, for sure. But, so why don’t we take a moment right now, to kind of define some the terms that we use relatively frequently.

So, there’s the easy one, right out of the gate, which is fanfiction. What is fanfiction? Fanfiction is where a fan of any sort of media - it could be television, film, books, comic books, cartoons, you name it – takes the characters from their favourite title, and either writes those characters within the universe of the fandom that they’re drawing from, or writes them into a completely different scenario. And that’s called AU, or alternate universe fanfiction.

DELAYNE : Right. And when we’re within the realm of the media itself, we’ll refer to that as canon.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, being either canon-adjacent, canon-divergent, meaning it goes along with canon to a point and the splits away, typically because whatever the writer is pulling from, their source material is diverging from whatever, sort of, they’ve come up with, for their own storyline.

DELAYNE : They don’t like how the writers wrote it, so they’re going to take it off from whatever point, and then go from there.

DARKWICCAN : Or like with the fic we were talking about last week, with Haught’s History, Smurf was writing canon-compliant, and then the – she got ahead of – or rather the show got ahead of her, turned down a street she wasn’t prepared for, and she’s like, “Well I’ve already got this, like, pages and pages long outline, that I’m just going to stick to.” Which is fine, ‘cause that story is fantastic.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So that’s your basics for fanfiction, and then AU, or alternative universe fanfiction. What other terms do we throw around a lot? Beta. What’s a beta?

DELAYNE : Oh, yeah. Y’know, I always wondered why they’re not just called editors.

DARKWICCAN : Well, I think I know the answer to that. I could be wrong, I didn’t look this up, I did not Google this. But I think the reason why is it started off less as a thing of an editor, y’know, in normal writing you pass your work off to an editor and they go through it and they make red notes, y’know, red pen it, and they go, “Fix this, this doesn’t work, oh you ran off track here, have you thought about trying this angle, da da da.” And that’s what an editor does.

But I think with beta reading, what it started off as, is truly the term for beta, as in beta testing. “I’m going to try this on you first, see if you like it, and if you do like it, if you don’t think it’s a pile of crap, then I will publish it online, y’know, in whatever form or forum I post my writing to.” So I think it started off as just a “Here, beta test my writing.”

DELAYNE : Okay, so beta as in the actual, was it the Greek, the being the second –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, second set of eyes. Yeah. You’re trying it out. But I think that it’s evolved to being more of an editor, and in some cases a co-author, depending on how involved the writer and their beta become. But so, yeah, a beta reader, or just beta for short, is essentially the editor, they’re the editors of the fanfiction world.

DELAYNE : Or the BFFs, that at least make sure you’re not posting something that’s absolutely terrible.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and/or the BFFs. But anyway, back to definitions. So we’ve covered what fanfiction is, alternative universe fiction, or AU fiction, what a beta reader is. Let’s see, what else do we throw around a lot? Oh, well, the site names for where these stories are posted themselves tend to get short-handed.

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : So the main repository for all of fic across pretty much any fandom you can dream up is called Archive of Our Own dot org. But for short, it’s called AO3. And most of the authors that we talk to on this program are authors who have posted their work to AO3.

And the other big site out there is called fanfiction dot net, which again just so many syllables coming at you, it’s been reduced to simply fanfic dot net. But if you type fanfic dot net into your browser, you won’t get to the right place. So fanfiction dot net is the actual site.

Okay, I think that’s enough, sort of, definitions for today, I’m sure that as we come across more terminology in future episodes we’ll provide a handy-dandy definition. And of course on our website, as part of our FAQ, we can also provide an appendix that defines these terms.

DELAYNE : And if you’re still don’t know, tweet at us, or find us on Facebook.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, we will help you to understand, because the more people reading fanfiction, the better, in our opinion.

DELAYNE : Definitely.

DELAYNE : Today we have got to talk about one of our favourite – well, all of the ones we talk about on the show, I think are favourites. But this series – duet, really – is, I think, one of Delayne and my favourites. And this is the Nicole Haught and Waverly Earp point of view, a POV, pieces, by tigerlo.

I don’t even know where to begin, with this, because tigerlo is one of those writers who is, first of all, incredibly prolific. She writes so much, and so often, and all of her work is so high quality. It’s, first of all, incredibly impressive, and second of all, kind of hard to keep up with, ‘cause you kind of feel like you’re always playing catch-up, to catch up to her and her output, which is why we’re only focusing on her two point of view pieces right now. Because to take on her entire library of work would be a bit daunting, at least in one episode.

But we can – well, we’ll, I’m sure, come back to her in the future as well.

DELAYNE : Gladly, I will follow her to the end of the earth right now. I – anything, she writes –

DARKWICCAN : Considering she’s based out of New Zealand, kind of is near the end of the earth, so, you can make good on that promise.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Definitely one of those authors that I will absolutely read anything she writes. Doesn’t matter.

DARKWICCAN : She has such a signature style of writing. It’s very, very, very lyrical and it moves, it’s almost like the writing itself sort of weaves, and undulates as you follow it. She utilizes tools like bold, and italic, and even individual spaces between letters and words to add emphasis and feeling, and you really do feel everything that she’s writing down. And it’s just so beautiful.

DELAYNE : Visceral, is the word that I chose.

DARKWICCAN : Good word.

DELAYNE : It’s just so raw, and it’s all of the emotion, all of the feels, it’s all everything, all at once, all the time, and it is poetry.

DARKWICCAN : It is poetry, and it’s very romantic, and soft, and so very thoughtful. I really love the fact that she decided, or was inspired, to take the time to really write these perspectives, these season perspectives, from both Nicole and Waverly’s points of view. You know, the first one she wrote was for Nicole, and it covered both season one and two, in two separate chapters. Season one was chapter one, obviously, season two, chapter two.

DELAYNE : Waverly’s group title is I waited (and you came).

DARKWICCAN : And Nicole’s is I’ll hold for now (but we’ll meet before the end). That’s another thing I love about tigerlo’s writing is her titles are so evocative and just inspired. So yeah, Nicole’s is I’ll hold for now (but we’ll meet before the end) and that is series set is made up of two titles, the first one is an ache; unceasing, which is the - her point of view for season one. And then within, we find the light, which is Nicole’s point of view for season two.

What were your thoughts on reading Nicole’s season one piece?

DELAYNE : The line about “straight girls don’t blush quite so prettily.” I loved that.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Oh yes, when Nicole – is that when she’s first flirting with Waverly?

DELAYNE : Yeah, that’s the opening scene. Because Waverly is definitely blushing.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, absolutely. Very prettily.

DELAYNE : Very prettily.

DARKWICCAN : And she’s giving that sort of glow-ey heart eyes look at Nicole. But I also like that the very opening line of that first fic from Nicole’s point of view is “The first time Nicole Haught sees Waverly Earp she falls in love.” And you’re just like, “Yeees!”

DELAYNE : Boom, damn right there.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, let’s kill all of the tension and get right to the point. And – but it’s not only that we just have that moment, that direct, y’know, that direction right away, the moment she sees Waverly Earp for the first time she falls in love, it’s that then we get into what tigerlo does absolutely the best of anyone, and she gets into describing all of the emotional and physical feelings that Nicole is experiencing in that moment.

DELAYNE : Right, ‘cause it’s not “Here, these are just internal dialogue”, it is feeling, it is not “here’s what Nicole is thinking”, here is _showing_ you exactly what she’s feeling and we’re all on that ride.

DARKWICCAN : Exactly. We end up feeling it too, along with Nicole.

DELAYNE : Oh, gosh.

DARKWICCAN : I feel like we actually end up breathing with Nicole, and that is so due entirely to the way that tigerlo had shaped the storytelling. She doesn’t really get stuck into these deep, heavy, long paragraphs, she really takes things one line at a time so you read this sentence, and you can take a breath, and then you move into the next sentence, and you know, you breathe through that, and so you are really breathing in time with the characters. And so that sensation, the emotions that her characters are experiencing, you’re really experiencing in real time with them.

DELAYNE : I love the way that you put that, breathing with –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s – well, thank you.

DELAYNE : Thank you. Some of my other notes, is that we do have a few scenes that aren’t shown in canon. Waverly bringing Nicole all the [inaudible].

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] That was so adorable! Because you know that she would do that! She doesn’t know what Nicole wants so she gets one of everything. And we know she would do that, because in season two of the show, when she’s at the spa with Rosita, she brings all the waters. Or as many as she can carry at once! Right?

DELAYNE : And so, I mean, Nicole had ordered a cappuccino, but, y’know, just in case that they mood has changed, or – and of course, most people, to-go cups aren’t going to be cappuccino, it’s going to be a latte, or a mocha –

DARKWICCAN : Or just a coffee.

DELAYNE : And of course it’s the hot chocolate. Of course it’s the hot chocolate, that’s adorable.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. I like the fact that she decided that Nicole drinks hot chocolate, as her go-to. Another thing I really like about this particular work of hers, of tigerlo’s, is that you really, again, because you’re feeling everything Nicole’s feeling, you’re also in her head with her. And you play along with that second-guessing game that so many, I think, of us queer women, totally, totally understand.

Because, when you’re queer, and you’re female, it’s really hard to spot another lesbian in the wild, or potential lesbian. You get the vibe-age, right, you get the vibes, but there is that sort of like, “Well, I think she might be, but, y’know, she’s not giving me all the classic tells, but she did seem to respond to my flirting, which was nice, but maybe she was just being nice.”

It is that sort of, like, constant mental gymnastics, y’know, routine that you’re going through.

DELAYNE : And where I live, where all the women wear boots and plaid, y’know, something as simple as that isn’t nice and obvious, so yeah, you got to look for those subtle clues, like, “I think I’m flirting, are they flirting, or are they being nice?”

DARKWICCAN : Exactly. Gosh, another one of the, from Nicole’s piece, and this is very early on, in Nicole’s piece, but another kind of turn of phrase that tigerlo wrote that just sticks with me is when she says,

“And Nicole doesn't believe in soul mates or true love, at least she didn't before she met Waverly, but she's beginning to change her stance on that.

Because when Waverly touches her, when Waverly reaches for her something Nicole didn't even know was there locks into place beneath her skin.”

Oh, it’s so good.

DELAYNE : Oh!

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I know right! We could just sit here and sigh, we could just sit here and sigh.

DELAYNE : If we’re doing lines, I have one that’s more towards the end. Because it’s after the kiss, where she says, “she wants Waverly to be happy above all else but watching someone else give that to her instead would have destroyed Nicole eventually.”

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yeah.

DELAYNE : Like, I know we’ve reached the scene where they’ve kissed, but it’s like, just that even idea of that heartbreak is –

DARKWICCAN : But it’s so true, because when you truly love someone you want, you put their happiness above all else. And, it’s one of these things where we say, “Well, I just want them to be happy, even if they’re not happy with me, even if they’re happy with someone else.” But you know what, that’s a bit of a lie that we tell ourselves, because while yes, we absolutely want that person to be happy, really want them to be happy with _us_.

So I love the fact that she has Nicole admit that to herself. Yes, she wants Waverly to be happy, but if wasn’t with her, it would have killed her eventually. And that’s just so true, destroyed.

DELAYNE : Destroyed –

DARKWICCAN : But then, so that was, that really covers Nicole’s point of view, series one. Do you want to hop over to Waverly’s series one, or do you want to stay with Nicole, for series two, and then...?

DELAYNE : I actually, on re-read, I hopped over to Waverly’s to see, sort of, more of a side-by-side.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s like, tigerlo wrote Nicole in her entirety, season one and two, first, and then went back and wrote Waverly’s point of view. But what’s so great about it is that even though she’s writing this kind of concurrent point of view history of Waverly versus Nicole, it’s not redundant.

DELAYNE : Absolutely not. I was looking for the redundancies and I’m like, ugh, I wanted to see the scene on the other side. But no, actually, we have a completely different scene, and that’s okay, it’s awesome.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s totally okay, I mean, yeah. And the great thing is it’s maintain that sense of mystery of, “Gosh, what was Waverly thinking in this scene with Nicole.” Well, we don’t know, but here’s this other scene where now we get to wonder, “What was Nicole thinking?” but we know what Waverly was thinking. But, she – the thing I like about it is that tigerlo didn’t take the short-cut. She could have taken the short-cut and just been redundant, and just re-hashed, re-written those exact same scenes from Waverly’s point of view, but she was like, “Nope, not going to do that.” And I think maybe because it would have been boring for her, as a writer, to do that. But it just ends up being an even bigger gift for us, as her readers. So the Waverly, the Waverly set is I waited and you came, which –

DELAYNE : Let me just say, nice use of double entendre there, nice one.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Nice one. And the first piece in that, the season one piece from Waverly’s point of view, is called inside, an echo. And once again, she does this great job of getting really stuck into Waverly’s thought process, and I really like how she comes out from the – okay, so from Nicole, we have a character who is a lesbian, knows who she is, knows that she is attracted to women, and is settled in with this identity of herself. Whereas with Waverly, we’ve got a woman – a woman, yeah, she’s an adult – who has never been presented with any other option but heteronormativity. Especially in a small town.

DELAYNE : Especially in a small town!

DARKWICCAN : And so it was – again, she’s got such a gift, tigerlo, for being able to really make you – or not, she doesn’t make you, she doesn’t grab you by the wrist and force you into an arm lock – but she leads you along, y’know, into being with the character and in the character’s headspace. And so it’s really interesting to go through that sort of mental back-and-forth in Waverly’s own mind, or emotional back-and-forth with her, internally as well, as she’s trying to understand these feelings that she’s feeling, for this striking, red-headed cop who has suddenly come into her world.

DELAYNE : It is unbelievably well done. Back to the title, though, the echo is brought up again, ‘cause this I – I just have to read this line. “There’s a ghost of an echo that sounds like _I betrayed her, because I love you,_ but that doesn’t make any sense, none at all.”

DARKWICCAN : Is that from inside, an echo? Or is that from the second work?

DELAYNE : That is from – no, that’s from the first.

DARKWICCAN : That’s from the first?

DELAYNE : That’s from the first.

DARKWICCAN : When does that come up – is that in the dream? I, sorry, you’re going to have to help me out, I –

DELAYNE : After Shorty’s wake, she stops at the bar that morning, after leaving – it says Champ’s, I’m assuming, because my headcanon is Champ does not live above the bar, that is Waverly’s apartment – and she makes her way to the bar. And Nicole is running – out for a run that morning – and she sort of like, goes somewhere, and Nicole’s like, “Hello? Where’d you go?” So there’s that echo.

DARKWICCAN : So, she’s sort of remembering from the future, in that moment.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : God, tigerlo’s good.

DELAYNE : Right? But back to Waverly dealing with her sexuality. Tigerlo brings up actually sex and Waverly – ‘cause, there’s, everyone has their own way of writing Waverly, and some write Waverly as a very sexual person, very in touch with her sexuality, and tigerlo has written Waverly as _not_. At least in terms of self-pleasure, and when she finally gets to the point where she thinks of Nicole, like, hey, this works a lot better, and that was just so beautifully done.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, you mean like fantasizing, and things like that?

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Right, yeah. I mean, I agree, one thing that tigerlo does not do is she does not shy away from sexuality, in her writing, at all. But it’s never – she always handles it in a very beautiful way, it’s never crass, and it’s never vulgar, it’s always very, very beautiful, and earned. And yeah, like you say, Waverly – and I think it’s because she just didn’t know that there were other options – y’know, Waverly isn’t particularly in touch with her sexuality and so – kind of regurgitating what you just said, I’m sorry – but she -

DELAYNE : You’re fine. You usually say it better anyway.

DARKWICCAN : She - [laughter] But she – once she realises, once she starts to view Nicole as a sexual object, of desire, that’s when she finally, that part of her opens up and yeah, she does open herself up to the idea, the possibility of fantasizing about Nicole.

Another thing I really like in this first, inside, an echo, is as she kind of comes to that realization, she starts to get really frustrated that when she wakes up in the morning she’s not waking up next to Nicole yet. She rolls over expecting warm and soft, and runs into hot and rough, and she’s like, “Uggh, no, this isn’t what I want anymore,” and you’re like, “That’s right girl, you go get what you want.”

But it’s really nice, I like that tigerlo approaches scenes of intimacy in a very adult tone of voice.

DELAYNE : And it really emphasizes the intimacy part of sex.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely, it’s not about the physical activity itself, it’s about the intimacy and the connection, the physical, and also verbal, communication that happens. And she is so excellent about providing a nod to consent.

DELAYNE : Consent is sexy.

DARKWICCAN : Consent is sexy, absolutely. What did you think of how – kind of staying with Waverly – what did you think about how she approached Gooverly, when we get to the season two portion of Waverly’s point of view?

DELAYNE : I like how she did it, and she’s very clear in the notes, this is Waverly’s point of view, so when we are in the fic, we are in Waverly’s head space, there’s no Mikshun trying to, y’know – we don’t deviate in – go into an even darker place, y’know, we are shown that Waverly’s like, “Something’s off, here,” but –

DARKWICCAN : Right. It’s never – we don’t get that Waverly/Gooverly switch, we’re always just with our Waverly. And, it’s sort of that – the way that tigerlo’s captured the sort of creeping terror, the slow, creeping terror of, “I feel different, not necessarily bad different, just kind of different,” and how slowly over time that becomes, “Oh no, there’s something in here with me, I’m losing time, I know it’s bad, and it’s making me do bad things, but I don’t know who to tell about this.”

Because she’s worried that if she tells someone, that Mikshun will make her do something to that person. So, specifically Nicole, right, so she’s sort of trapped in this scenario where she can’t tell anyone, really, what’s going on, because she fears for their safety. But she needs help so badly, but she doesn’t know how to ask for help.

So, she had a whole lot of meaty stuff from the source material of the series to really dig into with Waverly’s point of view, especially for season two, because not only did she have the Mikshun situation, but she also had the is Waverly an Earp by blood situation going on. As well, and then, the sort of fallout from Nicole’s choices regarding that, and trying to, quote, “protect her,” misguided descision to try to protect her by hiding results. And then everything Nicole, getting her – so really, tigerlo just had so much to dig into, but even so, even with all the source material to play with, she managed to keep her storytelling to a pretty tight pace, and yet you never felt like you were missing out on anything.

DELAYNE : Right. I mean –

DARKWICCAN : There are some big jumps. There are some big jumps, but you still, I feel you can balance it out with Nicole’s side of things, so even if we’re not covering something from Waverly’s point of view, it does get covered, typically, at least in some sense, from Nicole’s point of view. So we do get somebody’s take on the matter, and so yeah, so something’s always there. And now Waverly pieces are significantly longer than the Nicole pieces, by probably about six thousand words, I think.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, ‘cause the Nicole ones are averaging around 14k, and then the Waverly pieces were about 20k?

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, so, definitely there’s a lot of meat on this bone, but it’s not over, it’s not as a fat - a fatted cow. [laughter] It’s, it’s –

DELAYNE : [laughter] Sorry, my brain thought you were going to go somewhere else with that.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, I’m so glad I didn’t go the direction your brain thought I was going to go.

DELAYNE : Me too.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, jeez. But, you almost feel like you – what I’m trying to say is that it’s not too much, it’s just enough, and it’s perfectly done.

DELAYNE : Yes, it doesn’t feel, like I’ve said before, y’know, hey, comparative literature. We’ve talked about another fic that’s a behind-the-scenes Nicole fic, so we could compare, except they are so different, completely different, and they’re both fantastic, in their own way.

Where I was going with this, is that it’s similar in that it’s not just here’s what you saw on the TV show, with some internal dialogue. It’s not one of those fics.

DARKWICCAN : No, it’s a behind-the-scenes fic, or a between-the-scenes fic, but not in the sort of traditional sense of the approach to that. Yeah, yeah. It’s poetry. It’s – well, technically it’s prose, but it’s poetic prose.

DELAYNE : It’s been a long time since I took the class about poetry, but yeah, okay, prose. Like the title of this cast, Let’s Get Lyrical.

DARKWICCAN : Let’s Get Lyrical, yes. See, you and I have been going back and forth here for about half an hour talking about how incredible tigerlo is, but you know who would be really great to tell? Is tigerlo herself.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Right?

DARKWICCAN : Right? And so, that’s what we did. We went out, we tracked her down, and we asked her to come on the show. So, she is joining us after – for our second segment today. And we are super excited to have her on, all the way from New Zealand, it’s going to be amazing. But before –

DELAYNE : Fantastic.

DARKWICCAN : Before we go to our second segment, we have to introduce this week’s[CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Forward Momentum by Gareth Coker

DARKWICCAN : And welcome back everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction, I am your host, DarkWiccan, with my co-host –

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we are super excited, because as you know we spent the first half of our show fangirling over this amazing author and her fantastic introspective works. We are thrilled to have with us, all the way from New Zealand, tigerlo, also known as Amy. Amy, welcome to the podcast.

TIGERLO : Thanks for having me, guys. Thanks a million.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, we are so excited to have you here, especially Delayne. Right, Delayne?

DELAYNE : I am beside myself, I am – I – well, I’ll just tell you this, right now, right out the gate. You finally inspired my first fic, to start writing. It might not have been what I published, but when I finally crossed that line into, “Okay I’m going to start writing,” it was all you, dear, it was all you.

TIGERLO : Aw, stop it, are you being serious? That’s insane.

DARKWICCAN : She is absolutely serious. You are the writer that I think most of us want to be when we grow up. [laughter]

TIGERLO : Aw, no way. You guys – you – that’s ridiculous. You’re just flattering me.

DARKWICCAN : Nope! [laughter] I mean, it might be flattery, but it’s honest flattery, it’s genuine flattery.

DELAYNE : Yes!

TIGERLO : Aw, man, you guys are amazing. Can I hire you, do you want to be around all the time? You can be like my little motivational pocket pieces.

DARKWICCAN : We can be your like – your ego fluffers, just kind of, y’know -

TIGERLO : Yeah, it’s going to be amazing, but I’ll write fic for you, like I’ll pay you in some way. Y’know, probably in that, if that’s how you’d like to be paid.

DELAYNE : My wife really wants to go to New Zealand, so she would totally be okay with that, if she can come along.

TIGERLO : It’s a pretty place here. It’s a - like – I tell everybody, you should come. You should absolutely come.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, definitely, I mean, gosh, I grew up watching Xena, and I was like, “Look at that place,” and then –

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : And then Lord of the Rings came along, and it was just like: woah. That is some beautiful landscape. And is there anything – is it like, I know you guys are near to Australia, is there anything that is, y’know, Australia is known for the country that, the country itself will just kill you, because of all the flora and fauna that is incredibly deadly.

Anything like that in New Zealand? Or is it just super nice and wonderful?

TIGERLO : It is absolutely nothing like that here. It’s like, this is pretty – you may or may not be aware – but there’s a pretty highly contentious relationship between Australia and New Zealand. We fight over a number of different things, including but not limited to: famous actresses; desserts – we’ve got this thing called a pavlova, do you guys know what a pavlova is?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah! I’ve heard of the pavlova, yeah.

TIGERLO : Yeah, so it’s like, that’s probably the point of highest content between Australia and New Zealand, is that both people claim to have invented the pavlova. That’s, seriously, it’s like, it’s a life-ruining argument for some people, it’s just ridiculous.

But, honestly, New Zealand is nothing like Australia, we have like two poisonous spiders. One you see on a reasonably regular basis, but like not all the time, and even if you get bitten, it’s like, you just have to go and get some antibiotics, like it’s really not serious. And the other one I’ve never seen in my entire life, so.

We don’t have snakes, we don’t have – aw, it’s easy-peasy, it’s like, it’s a cruisy life to live here.

DARKWICCAN : And is gay marriage legal there already?

TIGERLO : It is, it is, it’s amazing. So I kind of – my god - this is like – I’m being such a bad gay, for not knowing this, but it’s been legal for... I want to say like three or four years, now. We’ve had civil unions for a long time, but yeah, gay marriage has been legal here for a while, so that’s pretty amazing, something to be proud of, I think.

DARKWICCAN : That is something to truly be proud of, and you know what, I mean, for me and my wife, it’s always been like, Canada, or New Zealand. I think New Zealand might be leading a little bit, just ‘cause it’s – well, you’re there, so that already, huge perk. [laughter]

TIGERLO : Oh, come on over, come on over, I’ve got a spare room, you can stay.

DARKWICCAN : [still laughing] So, okay, so, you are probably one of the, Amy, you are one of the most prolific fanfic writers on AO3, on Archive of Our Own, and across many, many fandoms. How do you keep up this pace, is it just, you’re just constantly inspired and you must write?

TIGERLO : Yeah, pretty much. So, like I think I’ve said it a few times, people have asked me questions on Tumblr and what-not, and I’ve kind of given a bit of a brief answer, but I just, I’ve worked writing into my day, in a way where it’s just something that I do, without fail, and it just – like, if I have a good, productive day, I can get two or three thousand words done in a day.

So, it’s like, I’m so lucky, I’ve just hit this never-ending inspiration hose recently where there’s just stuff that needs to, sort of, come out and be written, so I know I’m super, super lucky in that respect.

But, yeah, I think I’ve also been lucky in that I’ve been inspired by lots of different fandoms as well, it’s not like, I attach myself to sort of one major one at a time, but I’ll quite happily dip in and out of a number of them if I, kind of, like I identify with the characters really well, or if there’s just something in a character that I really like.

DELAYNE : And your Tumblr is amazing, I love the little tit-bits across your Tumblr. That – it makes my day when I see oh, oh, Amy wrote something.

DARKWICCAN : Well, not only that, but your aesthetic, you have this beautiful aesthetic that you maintain on your Tumblr blog, that, where most of the images that you put up are black and white, and a lot them, there feels like there’s a lot of nature, y’know, based photography, and it just really, it is so in line with your writing style, it all just carries through, so. So good job! [laughter]

TIGERLO : Would you like me to let you in on a little secret?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

TIGERLO : So, often I have people direct message me and ask me whether – ‘cause I don’t have my likes, they’re not visible to other people, and the reason that they’re not visible is because they’re an absolute shambles. Like, the front of my Tumblr is just like, carefully curated, sort of, exterior, that’s only what I want people to see. But my likes page is just an absolute shit-show – oops, sorry. Am I allowed to swear here?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, we don’t give a shit, go for it.

TIGERLO : Yeah, like, it’s just such a mess, and so, that will never, ever be public, because if I let that be public the gig is up. Like, everybody is going to know.

DARKWICCAN : That’s okay, I keep – I have two Tumblr blogs. And on my personal Tumblr – ‘cause I’ve got my darkwiccan Tumblr, and then my personal Tumblr – my personal Tumblr I have it set up the same way, where all my likes are hidden, because it is the same. It’s a complete hoarding disaster of –

TIGERLO : Exactly, that’s - it’s hoarding, that’s exactly what it is.

DELAYNE : So that’s something I need to change on mine, I’m guessing? I’m doing this all wrong.

TIGERLO : I love it though, I love being able to see other people’s.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, it’s fun to kind of peep behind the curtain for other people and be like, “What are they liking? What are you actually into?”

TIGERLO : Everything. Everything.

DARKWICCAN : But, Amy, how did you get into writing fanfic?

TIGERLO : Oh, god, I don’t even know. That’s such a - it seems like a point, y’know, so far in the past now, I’m not – I’m kind of not even sure where it really began. But I think, initially, I was sort of like you, where I’ve read – you know, I’ve read a lot, I’ve read fanfic for years, and years, and years.

I think my very first, like, main fandom was... did you guys watch South of Nowhere?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

TIGERLO : So Spashley fanfic was like the first thing that I ever read, and then from there I sort of went into – I was really into Faberry, from Glee, they were my fav. And –

DARKWICCAN : Glee, my god, Glee. Okay.

TIGERLO : I know. RIP, that’s terrible. Anyway, moving swiftly along. I think I started writing when I sort of got into the SwanQueen fandom, on Once Upon A Time. So, I just, there were a few pieces that kind of inspired me, I guess I just read them and I was like – do you know when you read something, every now and then, and you’re like, “ _Damn_ that’s well written.” Like, you just need to stop and put everything down and like, contemplate that for a good hour, two hours, just sort of let it settle over you?

DARKWICCAN : That is pretty much everything you write, with us. That’s our reaction. And you’re right, yeah.

TIGERLO : That is very flattering. Well, look, I’m put – I’m like – I - I can’t even tell you how happy I am to hear that, because like, my lowly goal, when I first started writing, was that one day somebody might like, I might be able to somehow, kind of step on a ladder with some of these other fics that I was reading.

But, yeah, that’s how it started, I guess, I got inspired by amazing work. And when I first started writing I was still, I was back at uni. So like, you know you’re a uni student, you’re all over the show, you’re drunk approximately three times a week, and you sort of, you’re not a real adult.

And so it was really like, when I did write, it was really irregular, and then, it’s sort of only been – you know, I’ve always kind of written little bits and pieces, but it’s only been in the last, I’d say two years, where I’ve really kind of honed my skill a little bit more, I mean really in the last sort of eighteen to twelve months where I’ve gotten into a really good rhythm with it, I guess.

DARKWICCAN : Nice. Well, I mean, and you do have to be able to be selfish with your time and set that time aside for yourself, and say, “No, no, I’m going to this, at this time, every day. And come hell or high water, it’s going to happen.”

TIGERLO : Yeah, and I think, I’ve managed to cheat a little bit, because I don’t know if you guys have seen, but I do probably ninety-five percent of my writing while I’m out walking.

DELAYNE : Oh, wow.

DARKWICCAN : That multitasking blows my mind.

TIGERLO : Well, it’s a skill I’ve taught myself, over a long period of time. Because I’ve always read while I write [sic], and in Wellington, where I live, everybody walks everywhere. It’s like, everybody has cars, but nobody uses them because the city’s so accessible.

And so, a long time ago, because I walk to and from work, y’know, forever, I learned to read while I was walking, because it was sort of like wasted time for me. I was like, “Man, I wish I could do something in this time.”

And then, y’know, a couple of years ago, I sort of - that sort of bled into, “Oh, maybe I’ll try writing a little bit while I’m out walking,” and it actually became the perfect space because I just put my headphones in, and I just rock out to some mean tunes, and there’s nobody, there’s no distraction, there’s nothing else going on, I don’t have people coming up and asking me questions.

There’s nothing, I just kind of very selfishly, like you say, get to have some me time, and it also sort of doubles as a bit of a bonus that it’s not time that I’m ignoring anybody else, or not being a functional member of society.

DELAYNE : I am so impressed right now, I can’t, I can’t even. I don’t know what to do with myself. I tend to get ideas while I’m driving and I’m so angry ‘cause I can’t write them down or do anything while I’m driving. So, the fact that you can do it while walking is impressive to me.

TIGERLO : Actually that’s exactly how it started. I was out, like I’d be walking to and from walk and I’d have these amazing ideas and I’d be like, “Oh, god, I’ve got to write that down before I forget it,” and then I think that sort of slowly bled into, “Oh, maybe I could use this time slightly more constructively.”

But yeah, it is, it’s those kind of - well, for me, and it sounds like for you as well - it’s those quiet moments where you don’t have any other distractions, you’re sort of, I know that for me, my mind tends to wander, and I daydream about different bits and pieces, and then all of a sudden you just get this little lightbulb of an idea, and off you go.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And your writing style, Amy, your style is so lyrical, and unique, and it’s completely your own. I’ve never read anyone like you, so I just – I mean I really haven’t – so I just sit here going, “Where did she get this from?”

What inspired you, what inspired your approach to writing, do you have specific authors that you’ve read, that sort of influenced you, and then you developed your own style?

TIGERLO : Yeah, kind of a little bit, a little bit, I mean, it’s sort of, I guess there are a few kind of major authors from some of my previous fandoms where I’ve just been absolutely blown away by their work and I think I’ve taken little bits and pieces from each of them, but I think that part of it as well, you mentioned the aesthetic thing in terms of my blog, something that I’ve always wanted to do is, like, I like to make nice things, I like to make pretty things.

That sounds really vain, but I promise it’s actually, it comes from a nice place, y’know, it’s like, you sort of want, you just want to give these things to the world that are, I guess, a little bit nice and pure, and that’s kind of what I wanted to be able to emulate with my writing, was something that was beautiful and lovely and made people kind of sigh and go like, “Wow,” like, what I was mentioning to you just before. And I wanted them to kind of – well, it was never a conscious thing, but I guess it was always something where I would have loved them to have read poetically, y’know, or I’ve always sort of, I always strive some sort of beauty in the way that I write, that kind of is separate from the subject matter, but that kind of weaves the two of them together, that does that make sense?

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely it makes sense.

TIGERLO : Cool.

DELAYNE : Yes. In my notes, one of the first things I wrote, it says, “Poet.” That’s what I wrote, I wrote “Poet, you are a poet.”

DARKWICCAN : But did you know it?

[laughter]

TIGERLO : Well, I didn’t, I didn’t, until I get such amazing feedback from people like you, no idea.

DELAYNE : Alright DW, thanks for being a smart ass!

[laughter]

TIGERLO : Yeah, I mean, there are definitely probably like, I don’t know, two or three different authors in the SwanQueen fandom, actually, because I think that’s where my writing sort of originated, that if you ever need to read, if, like, if you’re fan of it, and you haven’t read them, absolutely go and check them out, but there’s like a couple of pieces that really stand out. There’s this one, the author’s name is foxbones, and the fic’s called together we grow wild, and I don’t know if you guys have ever read the His Dark Material’s series, the Philip Pullman, Golden Compass, Subtle Knife –

DARKWICCAN : Yes! Yes.

TIGERLO : - Amber Spyglass? Yeah, so it’s like a SwanQueen fic, but it’s with daemons. And like, bear with me, it sounds a bit silly, but the way that it’s written is just absolutely beautiful, I don’t think I’ve ever read anything as lovely. And, I, y’know, read that a few years ago, and it’s little things like that, like some of the way, the words that the author sort of weaves the story, y’know, taking a lot of inspiration from that.

And then, there were just another couple of ones, sort of similar, y’know, I take, or I lean on different techniques or different ways that they describe things, and then I kind of take them, I guess, and kind of turn them into something that suits my writing, or the fandom that I’m currently in.

DARKWICCAN : And you do it exceedingly well.

DELAYNE : Right!

TIGERLO : Thank you, stop it, thank you.

DELAYNE : We really, we just fangirl all over everyone, and we love you. Okay, so, let’s talk about your introspective pieces in particular. You started out with season one, Waverly’s perspective – or no, sorry –

DARKWICCAN : Well, Nicole, actually.

DELAYNE : - you started from Nicole’s – yes! I’m really my poorly written notes here, give me a break. So, when you started with Nicole’s, did you know that you automatically wanted to write Waverly’s as well, or did it sort of not occur to you until you started receiving all that feedback?

TIGERLO : I think I kind of did. I might not have planned it initially, but, I sort of, y’know, there’s a little part of me that if I start something, I like to see it sort of, completed in a whole sense. So, for me, just doing Nicole’s perspective, I mean, even though I would never have probably admitted it to myself, it was never going to just be that. Because it’s sort of, like, you can have that, and it’s a great, y’know, it’s a great part of the series, but what is a _Wynonna Earp_ fanfic without Waverly Earp, y’know? So, I was kidding myself. If somebody had asked me, and I would have said no, I was kidding myself, absolutely. I mean, it wasn’t - it wasn’t a plan, but it was at the same time.

DARKWICCAN : So, who did you find yourself connecting more with, Waverly or Nicole, when you wrote their pieces?

TIGERLO : Well, that’s kind of an interesting question, because I think that I automatically identify with Waverly, so much quicker than I do with Nicole. I think with her character I have so many similarities, so I kind of, I immediately gravitated towards her and I found her personality a lot - similar in a lot of ways to my own.

So, in saying it, I mean, she was sort of, she was an easy one to find, but finding her actual voice was a lot harder. Finding Nicole’s was a lot easier, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but for some reason it was.

I think that Waverly just had so much depth, and it took me a while to kind of crack right into the bottom of it, and kind of figure out who she was as a person, and what was underneath that surface level that we get to see on the show. That made it so much easier for me, once I got in her head I was like, this is home, like I total – y’know, you just sort of get someone when you write them, sometimes, and, well, I feel like I – and anyway, you guys will be able to say whether or not I actually managed to capture that, but it feels like I find her voice. And for me, it’s easier to settle into her, than it is Nicole.

But then in saying that, I’ve started writing this Wild West AU which – which – which had a hundred thousand words this week.

DARKWICCAN : Oh my goodness, that’s exciting.

TIGERLO : I know, I know. So I’ve been working on that with TheGaySmurf, who’s just an outstanding human.

DELAYNE : Oh my god.

TIGERLO : She’s absolutely wonderful.

DARKWICCAN : Yes she is.

TIGERLO : And so she’s been my little advisor and I said to her at the very beginning – I’m getting off track now, I apologize. You just cut this out, if you want to right, I’m digressing. I’m definitely digressing.

DELAYNE : No, keep -

DARKWICCAN : No keep going. It’s fine.

TIGERLO : So, I said to her at the very beginning, “Hey, I’ve kind of got this idea, I don’t know if you think it’s silly or not, but this is kind of like a rough outline. I don’t think it will take me too long, I was like, maybe thirty, forty thousand words, that’ll be it, like I’ll be able to get this story all tied up.”

I said to her, “I want to get this, like I want to write it in its entirety before I start posting,” because I just hate the idea that you get to the final chapter and you wish you could have changed something in the first chapter.

So, it’s, for me, I like to be able to look at something in its completeness, I mean, kind of take a picture of what you know –

DARKWICCAN : That’s how both Delayne and I work, as well, we won’t post something until it’s fully complete, and then through several, several editing passes.

TIGERLO : Yeah.

DELAYNE : That’s not how I used to work, however.

DARKWICCAN : That’s how you work now, though.

DELAYNE : That’s how I work _now_.

DARKWICCAN : Because somebody, named me, got on your – anyway, this is not about us.

DELAYNE : So, speaking of long -

TIGERLO : That’s good, that’s good.

DELAYNE : - lots and lots of words count, I mean, your Nicole chapters are fourteen thousand themselves, and the Waverly ones are over twenty. You say in your notes that you prefer the long fic versus the chapters. I mean, it worked well with introspective pieces, the season and the person, but is there a particular reason why that you like the longer fics versus it split into chapters?

TIGERLO : That’s a good question. I think there a couple of reasons, for me. I mean, the first, sort of, more selfish point, is that I write the way that I like to read. And for me, if I can read a piece, and I’ll kind of - if I can loop back round to this in my answer - but if I can read a piece in its entirety, like if it’s written in chapters I would, if I could, sort of save up a chunk of them so that I can read a good part of the story at once.

And so I guess I kind of yeah, when I write, I emulate what I like to read myself. So, if it works when I’m writing, I much prefer to be able to post it in – I mean, the POV perspective pieces, they just, they sort of fell so perfectly into that because, you know, you had two people and you had two seasons, so it was quite easy to do that split.

I think with something like this Wild West fic, that is - it’s lightly from Nicole’s point of view, but I dip in and out Waverly as well - it’s just not going to be possible to do that because it’s just so huge. In saying that, though, I think that I will try and build in as long a chapter as possible.

So I guess that’s the, that’s kind of a, you know I prefer the long pieces because I think that, as reader, you can kind of get into the story more, you can kind of lose yourself in the story more. That’s how I feel, anyway, when I’m reading a long piece, you sort of, you sink into the character’s world so much better than, you know, chapters, which are great if you’re trying to build suspense, and if you want to sort of do that in the story, then obviously chapters are much, much better for that, but for a lot of my stuff it sort of flows in a way that it doesn’t – it would be difficult to interrupt. Unless it was something like this other fic I’m working on.

DARKWICCAN : And I’d have to agree. I also really enjoy having a lengthy chapter to kind of dig into, over having a, like a whole bunch of really short chapters that I can scroll down in like two clicks. It’s like, “Oh, okay, already, moving on, great, okay.” Yeah, I mean sometimes you see these fics and they’ve got, y’know, forty plus chapters and you go, “Okay, well I guess I better dig in here, get the food set up, get the, y’know –“

TIGERLO : Exactly, yes.

DARKWICCAN : “- slippers on, and snuggle in with the blanket and sit down, and you start reading and each chapter’s only about, maybe, a thousand words.” And it’s like, “Okay, well, I feel like I was messed with.” [laughter]

TIGERLO : Yeah, exactly. And, I mean, like that’s cool for because that’s how some writers like to post their work, but yeah, for me, and I think it sounds like for you guys as well, it’s so much nicer if you can get, you sort of get so stuck into, if it’s chapters, I love it when you get so stuck into something that you’re surprised when you get to the bottom of the page. Because it’s been so long since you started at the top, you’re like, “Man, ah crap, like what have I been doing for the last thirty minutes?”

DARKWICCAN : “What do you mean it’s over?! What do you mean it’s over?!” Yeah. “It can’t be over.”

TIGERLO : Exactly, “What do you mean it’s on updates?”

DARKWICCAN : So, one thing, your fics are often rated Explicit. And - but your writing, I would say, isn’t explicit. The way that you approach scenes that are – well, they’re erotic scenes –

TIGERLO : But there’s no other way to beat around the bush, like they absolutely are.

DARKWICCAN : They’re less like, y’know, your kind of average, what you typically expect when you click on an explicit fic. They’re really more conversations, and – but more like physical conversations, with some dialogue built in, so I’m just wondering, how did you land on that idea, of presenting these scenes as more conversations than focusing so heavily on what’s actually happening in the bedroom?

TIGERLO : This is – I think it’s something, I mean, E-rated fic’s something that - they’re quite precious to me, in sort of an odd way – and if I can, hopefully I can answer this question right, but if you have a look on my Tumblr, like you sort of, as we spoke of earlier, I’ve kind of got an aesthetic going, right? I tend to gravitate towards things that are kind of nice, and pretty, and I strive to have my other writing flow, you know, as smoothly as possible.

And the again if I jump back to the, “What do I like to read?” It’s something that’s similar, in that if I do like to pick up an E-rated fic, it’s something that’s lyrical and nice, and classy, I guess, is kind of... Like when I write that stuff, that’s what I aim for, I really want it to be classy. And I think that, I think there’s time and a place for – uh – for different authors, y’know, writing E-rated fics, where, they sort of, y’know, they can be a little bit more explicit, and, they might be what you’re more used to, sort of, associating with an E-rated fic. But, having been inspired so early on by work that’s lovely and beautiful, I knew I always wanted to write, y’know, E-rated fics in a slightly different way.

And I know that – I know that they’re not for everybody, and I know that people don’t kind of work them into all of their stories, but for me - this sounds really silly, but I’m going to say it anyway - for me - and this isn’t actually the case, but its just – my stories for me feel more, they feel more complete when they have some sort of resolution like that.

And not all stories, not all stories _need_ a love scene, they don’t have to have something like that, and I think that’s another thing that’s really important, to notice that, y’know, things are perfectly fine without them, but for me, my story generally tends to lead itself, in a way, here, that scene is often presented.

Or, like with the stuff that’s sort of more solely focused around that sort of activity, it is – uh - [laughter] it’s still, y’know, it’s still something where I kind of see it as a challenge, right? I’m like, okay cool, so this is the prompt that I’ve come up with in my head, how can I make this... how can I make this scene as beautiful, as wholesome, y’know, as pleasurable to read as I possibly can.

And, I think that another thing that’s super important to me when I’m writing scenes like this is that they have to have substance around them. Like I said before, there’s a time and a place for explicit stuff, but it’s just not in my own writing. I need to have stuff like trust, and love, and consent, that’s so, so important, consent is so sexy, people that are going to be listening to this -

DELAYNE : Yes, it is.

TIGERLO : - consent is so sexy.

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely. Consent is the most sexy.

TIGERLO : Yeah, it absolutely is, and I love, side note, I love that they focused on it so much in the show, I think it’s just incredible, it’s wonderful.

But, y’know, for me, when I’m writing this stuff, the thing that’s almost more important than what they’re doing, is what they’re feeling, and what’s going on in their heads, and how they’re sort of processing stuff as well. Like, y’know, don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of, y’know, explicit detail from time to time, but I think there’s a way to present that, when you do have to have do that, to the reader, and the way that can kind of help set the bar a little bit higher on that class level, if that kind of makes sense?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it absolutely makes sense, and I completely agree with you. And I think that, honestly, I wouldn’t rate most of your fics that you’ve rated E, E. I’d rate them Mature, because when I tend to think of Explicit, the Explicit rating, I tend to think of things getting a bit rough, and very anatomical, and use of –

TIGERLO : That’s a great description, that’s exactly...

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and use of maybe vulgar, slang terms, or things like that. And again, there’s nothing wrong with that, doesn’t mean that those fics don’t have value, and that those authors aren’t writing something that’s worth reading for their audience. But I feel like what you’re writing is really more of mature expression of these scenes between two consenting adults, who are deeply in love with each other.

And, y’know, again we’re lucky enough that the source material is saying, “Yes, these are two adults who love each other, and consent with each other, and have sex with each other.” And that’s just part of their actual relationship. So, being able to take that and build off it in such a beautiful, and lyrical, and poetical way, in your fic writing is just – I love it.

It’s just, like, yes, this is what a mature, this is what a mature as in, as in an adult who has reached an age of behaviour and understanding. This is not just mature for the content, but mature for, y’know, the ability to – to – read this and go, “ _This_ is what it’s supposed to be.”

TIGERLO : I appreciate that, I really do.

And it’s like, I don’t know, I think the other thing that’s really important - I mean for me, and I know that when people are writing E-rated fics it’s not always sort of top of mind for them - but even with stuff like this, y’know, I strive to keep it as in character as I possibly can.

And that’s kind of, sometimes that’s actually where the challenge is when I’m writing things, ‘cause I think, okay, here’s a situation that I want to be able to sort of frame a story around, first I have to ask myself the question, “Do I actually think that these two characters would do this, within the confines of, y’know, the canon world that we’re given?”

And if the answer’s no, honestly I scrap it, because characterization is just so, so important to me. And, if I think, okay, yeah, it does, definitely, or it does but it might mean pushing the boundary of what I think Waverly and Nicole would probably do together, then it’s kind of, it’s a challenge to write it in such a way where you tick those characterization boxes as well as, y’know, getting across the line with whatever it is, the plot kind of story, and I’m trying to move around some of the scenes.

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely, yeah.

DELAYNE : And you write, you do characterization so well. I know in the second season when you’re dealing with Waverly being in the goo space, in the demon space, that y’know, you were very careful in your notes to explain why you wrote, how you wrote it. But I did notice that you published kind of two darker angstier fics afterwards, after you published that. So, I’m wondering if being in that headspace of Gooverly is that – did that sort of inspire, or is that something that you were already working on?

TIGERLO : That’s an interesting question, I mean, I want to just prefix this by saying I love angst, it’s actually my favorite thing to write, hands down my favorite thing to write. I kind of haven’t had much of a chance to fix my angst chops in this fandom, so to speak, because it’s difficult when you’ve got these two humans who, like, so thoroughly love each other, and are so soft as a couple, angst just doesn’t naturally fit in with them. So, it’s taken me a while to, y’know, find situations where I think angst does work with them.

So, to come back to your question, I guess, I wasn’t exactly inspired directly, but working my way through particularly those Waverly introspective pieces, kind of just allowed me to get deeper into her head. And from there I was able to go, “Okay, well, that’s kind of given me a better view of where I think, y’know, what those rock-bottom places are for her, like, what scares her the most, what does she hate the most, what does she love the most.”

Those sort of – like, getting in her head to that depth gave me, I think, a better understanding of those, y’know, super powerful emotions that she has, and that kind of led me into a space where I was able to go, “Okay, well if I know the things that I think scare her the most, and if I know the things that I think she hates the most, then how can I kind of wind those into this angsty piece that I so desperately want to write.”

DELAYNE : Oh, that is exactly the answer I was looking for, thank you. That was so beautiful. Like, that’s so awesome, yeah. That’s what I was going for.

DARKWICCAN : That is – you’re brilliant, I love you.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : I love you too.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, man. Well, Amy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, it has been absolutely amazing chatting with you. But now, we’ve had you on a bit of a warm seat, but now we got to put you on the hot seat. ‘Cause we’re going to ask you the question we ask all of our authors. Here we go.

TIGERLO : Shoot. Hit me with it.

DARKWICCAN : You’re stranded on a desert island, and can have only one fanfic to read. What is it?

TIGERLO : Oh god, this is – that’s an awful question. Just like choosing between children I don’t have. Can it be a series, or does it have to be one single fic?

DARKWICCAN : No, it can be a series.

TIGERLO : Okay, so I think –

DELAYNE : We’ll allow it.

TIGERLO : They’re allowed?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

TIGERLO : Good. I appreciate that, I really do. Okay, the fic – the series is one of the ones – it’s one of these ones that like I’ve been so hugely inspired by, and I don’t actually think it’s on AO3 anymore, which is tragic.

DARKWICCAN : Aw.

TIGERLO : No, that one might be, okay. The author is maleficently, and the series is called the fatal plunge, these three sort of fics where Once Upon A Time Emma recasts the curse with Regina’s help. They kind of get thrown into this world where they’re married, Emma doesn’t remember anything but Regina does. And it’s just so tragic, and so beautiful, because Regina just remembers everything and nobody else does, and she’s got to kind of deal with the consequences of doing this to help Emma, but actually being in the shit seat all over again. And it’s just, it’s magnificently done. Which is ironic, because the author is called maleficent [sic] so – or maleficently, sorry – but, that’s what I’d take. And it’s long, as well. Selfishly, it’s really long, the series is really long, I think it’s like a hundred thousand words or something all up.

DARKWICCAN : So it’ll keep you occupied for a while.

TIGERLO : Yeah it would, it absolutely would. Definitely.

DARKWICCAN : Well, awesome. Well we’ll see if we can find that fic on AO3 and we’ll provide a link to it in the show notes so that our listeners can also take a swing at reading some SwanQueen fic.

TIGERLO : Amazing. Yeah, definitely check it out, team. Check it out.

DARKWICCAN : Well, thank you so much for taking time out of your holiday week to chat with us crazy Yanks.

TIGERLO : It’s been my absolute pleasure. I know that you guys are sort of, like, fangirling about me, but I fangirl about you fangirling about me, like I can’t believe that that happened, that that’s a thing, I’m like, I can’t believe that people think that my writing is good, I can’t believe they want to talk to me. It’s just, yeah, it’s awesome. Thank you so much for having me on, honestly.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that concludes this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks again for listening to our show.

Tremendous thanks to Amy, aka Tigerlo, for joining us as our guest. Thanks also to our announcer, Byron Tidwell for our intro, and the Earp-a-palooza promotional spot.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Rubicon Artist by Intervals; Forward Momentum by Gareth Coker; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast
> 
> We're also on iTunes!


	4. Diverse Dynamics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week the podcast treads lightly into the controversial world of ABO fiction. We sit down with authors Kendrene and Jude81 to discuss their work "The WayHaught ABO Series".
> 
> CONTENT DISCLAIMER: This week's episode tackles very adult topics. If you are uncomfortable with open discussions of consenting sexual intercourse and fantastical physical gender nonconformity - this episode may not be for you.
> 
> P.S. In the first segment we mistakenly state that Kendrene was the sole author of the second and third fics of the series. Jude81 and Kendrene did, in fact, collaborate on both of these installments.

 

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/diverse-dynamics)

ORIGINAL AIR DATE: FEB 5, 2018

 

Read the Fics!: [The WayHaught ABO Series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/503752)

 

Kendrene's "Desert Island" fic: ["What You're Worth" by Half](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11886414)

Jude81's "Desert Island" fic: ["You're All I've Ever Loved (So Come On and Hate Me)" by Sarafaerosa](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4698842) (The 100 Fandom)

Transcript for the Deaf and HOH by Flying Fanatic

 

DARKWICCAN : Hi everybody, DW here. Before we get to the intro we just wanted to give you a quick heads up as to the nature of the content of today’s episode. First of all, we go into this episode with the understanding that sex exists. Also, we will be discussing the human anatomy and using language relevant to this subject.

So if you tend to listen to podcasts in earshot of children, and you’d rather they not hear about such things, or if you yourself are uncomfortable with this subject matter, you may want to skip this episode. You won’t hurt our feelings. Your listening comfort is what is most important.

Thus ends the disclaimer. On with the show.

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks, Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction, I am your host, DarkWiccan and with me is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi! It’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we are trying to figure out how to talk about this week’s show.

DELAYNE : Nervously, bumbling, yeah. A little out of my realm, personally.

DARKWICCAN : Right? Well, me too, honestly. But you know what? It’s a popular sub-genre of fanfiction and, y’know, like we said before we don’t really concern ourselves with content too much, as long as the fic itself is good. As long as the fic is well written and well presented.

DELAYNE : And this definitely fits in that.

DARKWICCAN : It really does! It absolutely does, and we’ll be setting ourselves a bit of a challenge, because I think both of us are kind of shy, so – right?

DELAYNE : Yes, that would be a nice way to put it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, so talking about very sexual fiction is a little bit, y’know, we’re kind of finding our way in the dark here.

DELAYNE : Right, cause all of these are rated E, and very wisely so -

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, yeah, definitely explicit. And I’m sure the listeners are getting tired of us beating around the bush, so we’ll just get right into it. Today’s topic is ABO fiction, specifically the works of Jude81 and Kendrene. Now I’m sure some of you out there are probably scratching your heads, going “ABO? What is that?” so -

DELAYNE : I definitely had to look that up myself. When this was proposed. Hey, we should read these.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And, so, basically, in short, what ABO stand for is Alpha, Beta, Omega, and that refers to pack dynamics coming from werewolf fiction, werewolf lore. But the interesting thing about ABO fiction is it sort of took that idea of, y’know, an alpha, and a beta, and omega, and pulled that away from the werewolf mythology -

DELAYNE : Right, cause there’s no werewolves -

DARKWICCAN : There are no werewolves. Yeah, pulled that concept away from the werewolf mythos and created this whole new sub-genre of fiction. And it’s really interesting in that it kinda - it sort of is completely born within fanfiction, I’ve never seen anything like this in regular fiction.

DELAYNE : Right. When I research actually publishing, online publishing outside of fanfiction, I think I remember seeing it come up then, so I mean I know it does exist outside of fanfiction. But a lot of those online published stories, self-published stories, tend to be sort of rooted in fanfiction in that that’s maybe where it started, and then these fic authors decided to break out with their own characters and publish their own books.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, well what’s interesting is that in the bit of research that I’ve done, you would think that something that is pulled out of like, a werewolf background, would have started from a werewolf series, like _Teen Wolf_ or something, right? But in reality I guess this whole ABO idea came from _Supernatural_ , of all things.

DELAYNE : Really?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and then -

DELAYNE : I’m so glad you further researched this cause I was actually wondering, where did it start.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, apparently it started in the _Supernatural_ fandom, in fanfic there, and then got picked up by the Clexa fandom, and for those of you who aren’t familiar with Clexa that’s from the show _The 100_ , and Clarke and Lexa where a woman loving woman couple on that show that - it ended badly, and we’re not going to go down that spiral. But the Clexa fandom seemed to pick that up, and the idea of the ABO style, and really run with it, and then I think that’s where sort of the majority of these fics exist right now are truly in the Clexa fandom. But it has been filtering into Wayhaught because you have a lot of fans of Clexa who came to Wayhaught after that show went south.

DELAYNE : Right.

DARKWICCAN : So it came over to Wayhaught, and it’s a unique genre, because again you’ve got this whole Alpha, Beta, Omega dynamic and it really has one thing in common with BDSM fiction, and I’d say really only one thing, and that is the whole you have someone who’s in a position of domination, and someone who is in the position of submission, but after that you can’t really say that they’re that similar.

DELAYNE : Yes, now that you point that out, yes, I agree completely.

DARKWICCAN : I think that there might be a little bit of a misconception about ABO that it is heavily rooted in BDSM, but - and folks out there who don’t know what BDSM means. BDSM is sort of broken up into three parts, you got B/D, and then D/s, and then S/M. So B/D is bondage and discipline, D/s is domination and submission, and then S/M is sadism and masochism. And if who don’t know what those mean I urge you to please -

DELAYNE : Just Google it. We don’t need to break it down for you any bit further.

DARKWICCAN : I think these sort of speak for themselves at that point. But I think there is this misconception, I know that I had this misconception, that ABO is rooted in sort of BDSM, and it’s really not.

DELAYNE : Right! It’s sort of a power, y’know, it’s a power dominance thing, like you said, the Alpha is the dominant, and the Omega the submissive, that is the way it has to be, according to this dynamic.

DARKWICCAN : Right, and one thing that in talking with other fans of this genre of ABO and talking to other writers, the key difference, and this is something that’s very important, is that in BDSM fiction consent is a big deal.

And as we’ve talked before on this show, consent is a huge deal, within especially the Wayhaught fandom, it’s a huge deal, and I guess in standard ABO fiction, consent isn’t necessary. Because you have these two beings who sort of at the mercy of their inner nature, whether they’re an Alpha, or an Omega, or a Beta, which is somewhere in the middle.

So you have this sort of careful line of kind of almost dubious consent that’s walked, and as a result I personally have shied away from the dub-con  - is the short-hand tag for it, for dubious consent, is dub-con - shied away from any fic that has that tag associated with it, ABO or otherwise. It just -

DELAYNE : Right. You bring up all these fantastic points, and now I realise okay, that’s why I was shying away from it as well, like yeah, that’s from what little research I have done, is that the Alpha pretty much “I can do what I want, because of my Alpha”.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I can get away with whatever, doesn’t matter what you think.

DELAYNE : Right

DARKWICCAN: And the Omega submits because they are designed to, essentially. So, having said that, the reason why we selected Jude81 and Kendrene’s work, the Wayhaught ABO series, is because they actually are subverting that trope within the ABO genre, because consent is a hugely important deal in their stories.

DELAYNE : Every single time, Nicole checks in.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Nicole, I would say, in the Wayhaught ABO series by Jude and Kendrene, Nicole is the Alpha, and Waverly is the Omega, but Nicole doesn’t behave like an Alpha. In fact, the title of the first work in the series is called Not So Typical because Nicole as an Alpha is anything but a typical Alpha.

DELAYNE : And the first line is “Nicole was not your typical Alpha” right there in the summary.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah the thesis statement, right up front, boom. And that is for me, as a reader, made me kind of exhale a little bit, and go, okay, I’m actually gonna read this, and I think I’m gonna like it. We’ll see what happens in the next, y’know, several thousand words, but I think just that thesis statement, right off the bat -

DELAYNE : Helped, so much.

DARKWICCAN : It helped a lot.

DELAYNE : That’s actually my first note right here: “Nicole is different, repeat throughout the universe” so there’s currently four in the series and it is re-emphasised in each fic in the series.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah if anything, Nicole actually submits to Waverly, which is again hugely unusual and you might say controversial, again within the sub-genre.

DELAYNE : ‘Cause -  and when she does, there’s usually kind of a side-note where Nicole, y’know, ‘cause these - the Alpha and the Omega are like this separate entity within these people. And so when the Alpha does, when Nicole does submit her Alpha like fights back and she has to beat the Alpha down.

DARKWICCAN : That is something that I found so interesting, because again in what research I’ve done, that is something that ABO authors don’t typically do, they don’t separate the Alpha from the person. Because I guess if you do that too much, then you’re stepping too heavily back into kind of werewolf lore, right, where you’ve got the wolf which is entirely separate from the human, right, there are these two separate entities. So I thought that was really interesting and - but I thought it worked so well because it really speaks to Nicole’s sense of integrity, and ability to be in control of herself and her Alpha nature.

So Jude wrote the first one, Jude wrote ‘Not So Typical’ and then Kendrene wrote the next two, and then Jude wrote the fourth one in the series right now. Jude’s decision - cause really she set the pace for the series - so Jude’s decision to make the Alpha and the Omega be almost separate entities within both Nicole and Waverly I thought was really, really interesting, and again just added to Nicole as being a moral and strong person and character.

DELAYNE : Right? Especially when it’s protective Nicole, when her Alpha comes out as that protective, and she’s like, she sort of embraces that the Alpha oh that’s Waverly I must protect her.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and again because Nicole is not a dominant - I mean she is -

DELAYNE : These words!

DARKWICCAN : It’s hard to like - she’s not an aggressive Alpha, let’s put it that way. She definitely - when she needs to be dominating, she’s dominating, but it’s never in a threatening way toward Waverly, it might be threatening to other Alphas who are being dicks.

DELAYNE : Which apparently is common.

DARKWICCAN : Which apparently is common, yeah. But Nicole did not approach Waverly to be her partner, Waverly made the decision to approach Nicole.

DELAYNE : I actually did make notes about that because that was something that was very interesting to me because that first fic, the first two chapters before we even get to the nitty-gritty of most ABO fic, is yeah, Waverly approached Nicole, and I just - I loved that scene so much.

DARKWICCAN : And even though Waverly is there basically offering herself up to Nicole, Nicole still keeps herself together and doesn’t let her Alpha run away with her.

DELAYNE : Right! And she’s also taken by surprise, so that might have been part of it.

DARKWICCAN : She is taken by surprise. Something that is in the ABO sub-genre that did carry over from the werewolf lore is heats and ruts. So, any of you out there who have pets who are not neutered, or who have taken part in 4H, or lived on a farm -

DELAYNE : Any animal science.

DARKWICCAN : Any animal husbandry, y’know, the term heat and rut should be familiar to you. For everybody else -

DELAYNE : It’s about sex.

DARKWICCAN : It’s about sex. Basically, Omegas go into heat and Alphas go into rut. So exactly what Delayne was saying, heats and ruts are about sex, and it’s about the need, the animal need to breed, right? So when a female Omega goes into heat, she’s at her most fertile, and basically -

DELAYNE: Males go into rut when they smell the females.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, exactly. Which brings us to another thing that is unique to ABO. Female Alphas in rut -

DELAYNE : And we’re giggling like schoolgirls because this is the part where we’re vaguely uncomfortable.

DARKWICCAN : Well it’s hard to talk about. Female Alphas in rut grow a penis. Saying it out loud does not help.

DELAYNE : Me giggling over here probably doesn’t help either.

DARKWICCAN : I’m not mocking it, neither of us are mocking this concept, it’s just, y’know, like when you’re a teenager and you’re talking about sex for the first time you get a little giggly, cause you’re a little uncomfortable, right?

DELAYNE : I am concerned with saying something dumb and offending people during this topic.

DARKWICCAN : We don’t want to offend anyone at all, I think that’s our biggest fear, actually. Mostly talking about this, we don’t want to offend anyone who writes this style of fiction, we don’t want to offend anyone who enjoys this style of fiction, and we don’t want to offend anyone who doesn’t. But it doesn’t - here’s the thing I’m actually - I know this is an element of ABO that turns a lot of readers off. They get to that in the tags and they go “Nope, nope, out. Nope, nope”.

DELAYNE : G exclamation P.

DARKWICCAN : Is the tag. And I can understand why that would cause certain readers to be like “We’ve stepped into a zone that is outside of my comfort and I’m not gonna do it” that is totally fine. I personally am not off-put by it, I find it rather intriguing, for me that notion of a female being able to impregnate another female - I think there are a lot of lesbians out there who go, y’know that’d be kinda nice.

DELAYNE : Well, and there’s, y’know, in other fics…

DARKWICCAN : Well there’s magical pregnancy, right?

DELAYNE : Whether it be a magic penis itself or the use of a strap-on or dildo and that is the vector of the magic - either way it’s done magically and there is penetrative objects of some form or another.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, there’s that, and coming from the Willow and Tara fic fandom, prior to getting into _Wynonna Earp_ and Wayhaught, magical pregnancies happen left right and centre. So yeah, it’s not something that is that unusual in women loving women fan-fiction, for there to be some sort of element where one female character is able to get another female character pregnant. ‘Cause I think that’s also that’s a dream that exists for a percentage of lesbian and queer women out there.

DELAYNE : Well if I could have a biological child with my wife…

DARKWICCAN : Oh, the same. Oh the same. Our kids would be so cute.

DELAYNE : My kid would be cute and also a pretentious asshole, and it would be fantastic.

DARKWICCAN : My kid would either be - would definitely be cute -  but would either be a total ham, and want to be the centre of attention all the time, or the complete opposite, and totally shy and hiding under a blanket.

DELAYNE : Or both, just fluctuates.

DARKWICCAN : Or both, just - exactly, just depending on the day. But anyway, so the heat and the rut are a huge element to ABO fiction, and with that females in rut having a penis and so what we’re talking about is penetrative sexual intercourse and that is a major feature in most ABO fiction and it’s no different here in the Wayhaught ABO series by Jude and Kendrene.

But what is different, again, is it is handled delicately, and softly and there is no question about how much Nicole cares for Waverly and wants her to feel safe and comfortable and cared for.

DELAYNE : Right, so it really, if you take out the ABO, it really is just like all the other smut fic, really, cause that’s why we love Wayhaught, because it is fluff and lovey and adorableness.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, exactly. With Wayhaught, in the television series we have something that’s rather unusual, and I think that we touched on this actually with Amy, also known as Tigerlo, last week where she was talking about how she likes to write angst but she’s having a really hard time finding a foothold to angst with Wayhaught. Because they are two characters who just love each other so deeply, and are so soft and gentle with each other, and really when you think about it that’s unusual in itself.

DELAYNE : ‘Cause angst should be easy, especially on television.

DARKWICCAN : Especially in dealing with television couples. So that’s one thing that I’ve really appreciated in the Jude and Kendrene series is that they haven’t deviated from that, they haven’t tried to force personas on either Waverly or Nicole that aren’t realist to who they are as characters.

DELAYNE : Wow, yeah, you just said that and the world makes sense, oh my gosh, you are so right. That’s probably why this ABO fic is great and why I like it, it’s because they stay true to Nicole and Waverly.

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely. And when Kendrene picks up from where Jude leaves off and starts in with the second work of the series, which is called Best Left Buried, this is where Kendrene picks up the ball, basically, and goes with it, and what’s interesting is she’s really good, not only at her characterisation of Nicole and Waverly, but also of Wynonna and Gus.

DELAYNE : Yeah, it’s actually pretty dark at first, y’know the background, because it’s fairly canon-adjacent, right?

DARKWICCAN : Reasonably so. Yeah, Nicole doesn’t know about revenants, at this point, but obviously this is something that Wynonna and the Earps have been dealing with, and at the beginning of - and I don’t really think this is a spoiler, if you’ve seen the television series - at the beginning of best left buried Willa has just come home from the Pine Barrens. So at this point she’s still sedated and unconscious.

So you’ve got this dynamic of Wynonna dealing with Willa’s return, and Waverly dealing with it, and both of them, very similarly to the show, are coming at it from completely different angles.

DELAYNE : Oh yeah.

DARKWICCAN : And Nicole sort of gets caught up in the middle of it and is there trying to protect her Omega, Waverly. And there’s a point that I actually thought, at the beginning of the story, that Nicole and Wynonna - Wynonna is an Alpha, I should mention, in the story - there was a point where I thought that they were going to actually get into a fight. Alphas traditionally don’t get along, they tend to butt heads.

DELAYNE : They’re competitive!

DARKWICCAN : ‘Cause they’re competitive and they’re competing for mates, right, just like in National Geographic. So, there’s a point at the beginning of Best Left Buried where I thought, oh gosh, oh this is gonna be bad, ‘cause they’re gonna get into it and that’s going to cause a whole lot of drama.

DELAYNE : But yes, Nicole being not so typical, acquiesces, but not to the point of submission, just -

DARKWICCAN : No, just acknowledging, she just acknowledges Wynonna’s position.

DELAYNE : Right, you’re her sister and you’re being protective, and I will allow that because you’re being protective.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. A thing I liked about Best Left Buried is we’re not dealing with a heat and a rut any more, that scenario has already been tackled in the first fic by Jude and so know we’ve just got two women who are settling into a relationship with each other, and without the element of the heat and the rut you don’t have that additional anatomical element. So it really is we’re back to two women, and both of them just sticking true to character, they love each other so much and that love shines through, and they’re so loving with each other.

DELAYNE : And actually in the second fic is where they actually use the love word ‘cause the first one was all about the heat and the rut and all the craziness that happens with their brains then, that they’re less in control. My favourite part about the second one, though, not just that they actually say they love each other, but when Nicole first shows up and Waverly isn’t sure they’re there yet, where it’s okay to see the one that you love all red-eyed and drippy-nosed, and I was like: aww. ‘Cause that’s so true, y’know you love someone you’re like: aw, you look terrible, I love you anyway.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, or just it doesn’t even matter. You can snot all over my shirt and that’s fine because all I care about is taking care of you and loving you.

DELAYNE : That just warmed my little gay heart.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, and so really you have this domestic Wayhaught sort of scenario, in Best Left Buried, where they end up back at Nicole’s house. And there’s snuggling on the couch, and making eggs, and watching Waverly’s favourite show, and sort of a very sweet moment that comes out of that.

DELAYNE : I just had it pulled up and oh my gosh I’m dying now, how did I forget about that?

DARKWICCAN : I don’t wanna spoil for anybody it is very very sweet and cute, and also a wink and a nudge at another fandom. But, essentially Nicole’s trying to find some way to prove to Waverly that she is there, she is there for life, she is committed and not going anywhere unless Waverly tells her to. And there’s this interesting thing in ABO, and it’s another carry-over from sort of werewolf stuff where two - an Omega and an Alpha - will permanently mate to each other by giving each other mating bites on the neck that scars the skin and leaves a pheromone scent residue, essentially marking that person as belonging to.

DELAYNE : So a physical, obvious physical sign, plus the scent, to prove to everyone else, that - it’s like very romantic werewolf-y wedding rings.

DARKWICCAN : So again in the series it’s a very young relationship, they’ve only been together a few weeks by the time the second story occurs and so it’s a little early for that, but Nicole wants to find a way to prove her commitment to Waverly so she takes a cue from Waverly’s favourite television show. And it’s really cute, but then we have, we finally have, a bad guy, or in this case a bad gal, who comes back on the scene, in the form - and again, I don’t really feel like this is a giveaway, a spoiler, hopefully Kendrene and Jude agree - but Constance Clootie shows up, and starts to wreak a little havoc, and that takes us into the third fic which was also written by Kendrene, called Stone Witch Heat, and the title should sort of give away what happens in the fic. Essentially, we’ve got a witch, who casts a spell. Everybody, can you guess what that spell is? ‘Cause she’s trying to distract the whole town of Purgatory while she does something nefarious on the side.

DELAYNE : It’s like Band Candy.

DARKWICCAN : Well I think what’s really interesting is how this - you get to see other people in the town react to this spell and how they behave under the influence of a heat or a rut, it’s really funny, actually, but it actually starts to get a little bit dangerous. We start to kind a get an idea of that at the point where Kendrene has left off, so the third fic is currently unfinished. But again, interestingly, we see Nicole functioning as a cop, in Stone Witch Heat but we don’t see Waverly, do we? Or if we do it’s very brief, and not in relation to Nicole or anything like that.

DELAYNE : I remember this one less, unfortunately.

DARKWICCAN : I think it’s probably ‘cause it’s unfinished so we kind of get to a point and then because we don’t have the conclusion it’s like, okay, sticking a pin in that, we’ll come back. But you can tell that it’s building up to something really interesting and you kinda what’s going to happen next, so we’ll just have to see what Kendrene does next.

But then the fourth work, which is a stand-a-lone piece, within this universe that Jude and Kendrene have created, is called Serve, and it was just recently posted a couple of days ago. And I think it is possibly the most dynamic - no, that’s not the word that I want - it’s the most clear example -

DELAYNE : Most unique to the dynamic.

DARKWICCAN : Most unique to the dynamic, absolutely, and clear example of Nicole’s willingness to do anything for Waverly. Don’t know how much farther we want to dig into it. Beyond that.

DELAYNE : Despite the tags - please read the tags before you read this - despite one of those tags, this is my favourite so far because it really just shows the Alpha and Nicole, and how they are within Nicole, it’s the most telling to me, I guess.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that’s the word that I think I was looking for, telling. And the most subversive, as you said, of the ABO trope -

DELAYNE : Extremely subversive.

DARKWICCAN: Essentially, and without really giving anything away, Nicole, Alpha Nicole, allows Omega Waverly, to put her in a true position of submission and the internal - as you were talking about, Delayne - the internal fight between Nicole and her Alpha is really incredible to behold, I think. And also, interestingly Waverly’s Omega self also finds her struggling with this new position.

DELAYNE: Right? That’s also very telling of where an Omega is in their heads, and the switching it up affects both of their inner wolfy selves.

DARKWICCAN : I think it affects them both, but it definitely affects Nicole the most deeply. Y’know, this is such an interesting, to me it’s such and interesting and fascinating genre of fiction and I have so many questions, and luckily we get to ask some of those questions and have some answers.

DELAYNE : Because you, DW, are awesome, and know how to talk to people, and get them to to answer your questions.

DARKWICCAN : So we did, we invited Kendrene and Jude to come on and so they will be joining us for our interview segment, the second half of our show. But I will say before we get into that,[CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM], be open minded about at least this series.

DELAYNE : Yes, and I am now willing to look into others because of this.

DARKWICCAN : I think ABO is a hugely misunderstood genre, I think a lot of people are understandably nervous about it, kind of off-put by the idea put forth in it. But when it’s written well it can change minds and I think that Jude and Kendrene’s series, ABO series, is an example of an ABO that is written extremely well and obviously can change minds. It changed my mind, it changed Delayne’s mind. Okay, so, on that note, I think it’s time to introduce this week’s [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Twisted Streets by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : And welcome back to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : We’re here with one of the authors of the Wayhaught ABO series, Kendrene and Jude is here in spirit but we’d love to welcome Kendrene to the show. Hi Kendrene, thank for joining us!

KENDRENE : Hello, thanks for having me.

DARKWICCAN : Thank you so much for coming on, I know you’re a little bit nervous, but hopefully we’ll – clearly we were able to allay some of those fears, to get you on here in the first place.

DELAYNE : We’re really not that scary, I promise.

DARKWICCAN : We’re not, we’re a couple of teddy bears. But even though Jude could not join us in person, we were able to send off some questions off to her in advance and she replied via email. So my lovely partner MJ will be reading those answers for us, so that you will actually hear four distinct voices, so there’s no confusion about who is whom. But I think the first thing -  one thing we got to ask all of our authors, Kendrene, is how did you get into fanfiction?

KENDRENE : Oh my god, I started writing fanfiction with Harry Potter, actually, I started reading fanfiction with Harry Potter, and then I was like, you know what, I’m going to write, but at the time I was still writing only in Italian, and I switched over to English, way back.

DARKWICCAN : You know I’ve got to say, considering English is your second language, or at least second written language, I would assume, I never would have guessed, that it’s not your primary language.

KENDRENE : That’s a huge compliment, thanks for that.

DARKWICCAN : Well, you’re welcome. But one thing Delayne and I were talking about in the first segment of our show, where we basically spend the entire half hour fangirling about your writing, is that ABO one of those, kind of misunderstood genres of fanfiction, right? I mean a lot of people come into it, or avoid it, because they have misconceptions. So what do you wish potential readers would understand about what ABO is, and what it is not?

KENDRENE : Well, first of all, let me preface this by saying that I’m not trying to speak over anyone because, as you said, it’s very controversial, so, there’s a lot of different opinions on it,  it’s good, it’s bad, so this is just my opinion and my take on it. And of course, everybody else is free to have their own opinion on the genre.

One of the main critiques that people have against it is that it pushes a lot of patriarchal themes, and sexism, and stuff like that, and I mean it’s true but again I think what we need to keep in mind is that it’s dystopia, kind of, setting, where some things are dialed up to a hundred.  And I think none of us really wants to live in that kind of society, where if you’re an Alpha you’re the best, and if you’re an Omega no matter how good you are or whatever, you’re still considered the lowest.

So I think that what I would like people to keep in mind when they approach the genre is just keep in mind this is all a fantasy and it’s kind of speculative fiction, in my opinion, and that’s why I found it interesting, especially in regards to the world-building. But do not take what’s written in the fics as like a stance the author has on actual issues that we face in our society, because most of the time, maybe we do take some elements as a critique to our society. We don’t do it directly, it’s allegorically speaking, but I think people need to keep in mind it’s a fantasy

And the other thing that people have a grudge against, I guess, is that – the fetish aspect of ABO.  Which again, I agree, but again I also think it’s present whenever you really write about a lot of smut. Like, whenever a fic is erotica centred you kind of brush against the fetish and kink and stuff like that. Which is not to me necessarily a bad thing, but then again, I would urge people to not take the sexual representation that you find in ABO as what actually happens in real life.

I’m kind of weirded out that I have to say it, but, apparently it needs to be said, but there’s a lot bestiality, kind of werewolf, kind of – you know, the wolf pheromones and stuff like that. It’s not something that we experience so we shouldn’t look at that and try to transpose it onto what our experiences are, because it’s just, to me it’s just a fantasy and that’s why I write it.

That’s the bottom line, at least. I’d like people to approach it critically, basically.

DARKWICCAN : That’s – yeah, absolutely, I completely get what you’re saying and agree with you. Here’s what Jude had to say to this question.

JUDE81 (MJ) : Before I get into it, I do want to clarify that I do not speak for the trans community, nor do I ever want to speak for the trans community. What follows is simply my opinion based on conversations I've had, what I've read on popular trans inclusive blogs, observations, and research I've done.

ABO is controversial in the trans community, especially for trans women; and somewhat controversial in the larger LGBTQ community. The genre seems to be equally loved and hated by various members of the community. There is definitely an element of fetishization in the genre, as there always is in a genre that’s so highly sexualized.

I actually regularly visit a few blogs on Tumblr created and operated by trans women. And some of these blogs have had a number of things to say about the ABO genre. I actually agree with much of what they say except for one aspect that I think gets lost in the controversy.

ABO stories are not trans stories, and they are not meant to be trans stories.

One of the biggest critiques, that I have seen, from trans women about the genre is that the sex in the ABO is not reflective of the trans experience. It is my understanding from my own research that many trans women who also love women and are bottom pre-op, may not engage with their genitalia or use it during sex, but prefer other means of enjoying sex with their partners that might involve sexual penetration via inguinal canals and anal penetration.

ABOs do not usually reflect these other means of sexual expression, and they aren’t meant to because female alphas aren’t meant to be trans women. They are Alphas, often governed by their instincts to fight, protect, and mate etc. They are dominating and can be aggressive. They are not meant to reflect the trans experience in any way, especially sexually.

The ABO genre does not generally deal with dysphoria, in the ABO world it doesn’t exist, because it’s normal for Alpha females to have a penis every day of their lives or to “grow” one when they are in rut or their omega is in heat, and once the heat and rut are over, their genitalia reverts back to having a vagina. No one in the ABO universe blinks twice, this is what is considered the norm, and obviously this is not the experience for the trans community.

The ABO genre in no way reflects the trans experience, as it isn’t meant to. I have actually started writing a story with a character who is a trans woman, and the story has nothing in common with the ABO stories I have written. I would never approach writing a trans character the same way I would an ABO character, and there are authors who write both ABO stories and trans stories , and they are entirely different and completely separate from each other.

DARKWICCAN : Now that’s something I have to admit, as a cisgendered woman-loving-woman, I feel, terrible, it didn’t occur to me that there would be that issue, that concern, on the side of the trans community. Do you have anything to say to that, at all, Kendrene?

KENDRENE : I sort of agree with what Jude said, and again, on the other hand, I feel like if there are trans women that do not like ABO, and do not like the concept of g!p in ABO, that’s completely fair, and they should be allowed to speak about it because it’s important to consider when we write it. And also, the other thing that I agree with Jude on is that there needs to be more representation in fics, and in media in general, that actually adresses the experience of what it is to be a trans woman, not only sexually but just in general. But I also feel like that can be said for asexual, or trans men, there’s just not enough, okay? So of course there needs to be more. I completely agree with that.

DARKWICCAN : And I can totally see what Jude is saying, as well, when she says that ABO fiction is not written about this community, about the trans community. Because, as she says, the idea of an Alpha female either always having, or growing, a penis is completely normal within this fantasy – underlined, many times – fantasy universe.

KENDRENE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : I can only infer that, based on her answer to this question, that she has been approached quite frequently from members of the trans community voicing their concerns about this. I can only imagine that’s why she chose to focus on it in her answer.

DELAYNE : Definitely a lot of research went into not only that answer but, it sounds like, in writing the fics in general.

DARKWICCAN : Very, very thoughtful.

DELAYNE : Yes, extremely so, I’m sort of blown away by it all. Let’s get back to the ABO specific part. Kendrene, so how do you decide what characters are Alpha, Beta, or Omega, and does the source material inform these choices, or is it a fic-by-fic decision?

KENDRENE : Well, since this is a _Wynonna Earp_ podcast, so we’ll just talk about _Wynonna Earp_. For example, I can see Nicole being both an Alpha and an Omega. But, I’ve tried to write Wynonna as an Omega and it just doesn’t work, at least for me. I think it’s more on the character than on the source material.

In general, of the ABOs I’ve written, the Wayhaught ones – or in general, the _Wynonna Earp_ ones – tend to be “softer”, compared to for example _The 100_ , and I do think that it’s due to the universe that it’s set into. Because even though Wynonna Earp can be a very dark episode – sorry, can be a very dark series, for example – when I say that I always think about the Jack of Knives episode, in Season 1, I really had a hard time watching that one episode, getting to the end.

I feel it’s campier, also, there’s always a lot of jokes, so, when you write that it’s just more brighter, I wanna say. But yeah, there are some characters that I can cast into different roles depending on the fic, and some characters are just one throughout because I just can’t see them as anything else. For example, Doc Holiday, Doc Holiday’s an Alpha for me. But like Dolls is a Beta. Despite being really dark men.

DARKWICCAN : So Dolls is a Beta? That’s -

KENDRENE : Yes, for Dolls a Beta.

DARKWICCAN : That’s interesting. So wait, how did you come to that decision?

KENDRENE : Because I feel like, considering the relationship that Wynonna has with both Doc and Dolls, right? With Doc she’s kind of always fighting, a bit, with him, and they tend to be very spiteful with each other. But with Dolls, it’s more like -  I don’t want to say it’s more supportive, because Doc supports her, Wynonna as well – but with Dolls, I feel like she’s calmer, so it’s impossible that he’s an Alpha. He must be a Beta.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, that’s so interesting.

DELAYNE : Right, so he doesn’t inspire her to puff up and fight back.

KENDRENE : Yes, and I also think that if he was an Alpha, he would have way more trouble controlling the demonic side that he has, instead being a Beta, he’s more laid back. And, I don’t know, I just always headcanoned that.

DARKWICCAN : Gosh, that’s really interesting, because of the other Wayhaught, or other _Wynonna Earp_ ABOs that I’ve read, Dolls tends to get cast as an Alpha quite a lot, so that’s a new take, I like it a lot. I actually totally agree with you.

KENDRENE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so we asked Jude: Jude your approach to writing Nicole as an Alpha is unusual to ABO Fiction. What inspired you to write an Alpha who is not driven to dominate and who, rather, submits to her Omega, Waverly? And Jude answered:

Jude 81 (MJ): I originally wrote Not So Typical, and Kendrene liked the story so much that she asked me if she could write in the universe I had created. That lead to our collaboration for the rest of the series, and Kendrene recognized my original vision for Nicole, and together we developed it.

If you’ve read any ABOs in the Clexa fandom or maybe in the Korrasami fandom, SuperCorp etc, you’ill have noticed that ABOs are often rather formulaic in some ways. Alphas are aggressive and dominating, Omegas are submissive and often ruled by their heats. To be blunt, ABOs are about letting go of inhibitions and giving in to the driving need to fuck, fuck, and fuck again. Obviously this can take many different forms, but the Alpha domination and Omega submission is a part of the genre. This doesn’t mean that ABO stories are only about sex, quite the opposite, many ABO stories are very well developed with detailed world-building and character growth. But sex always has been a part of the genre, and most of the stories are rated Explicit.

I wanted to create an atypical Alpha. One that wasn’t ruled by their instincts and pheromones, but was “softer”, if you will. One who didn’t allow their Alpha to rule their life. And I really wanted to create an Omega who was strong and most importantly, empowered, and not at the mercy of their heat. Nicole and Waverly really seemed like the perfect couple to explore these ideas. We’ve expanded on these ideas in the rest of the series, and in Serve, I really wanted to explore it more, the idea that being an Alpha really meant serving their Omega, that an Alpha’s sole duty was to their Omega. And in Serve, I decided to frame the idea in their sexual explorations.

In typical ABO, it goes against an Alpha’s nature to be submissive, and I really wanted to explore that but also in the context of Waverly being in heat. She’s in heat, which typically would mean she basically just wants to be dominated and fucked. So for Nicole to willingly submit to Waverly, while Waverly was in heat, was basically the embodiment of empowering and serving her Omega. Nicole’s strength isn’t necessarily that she is an Alpha, but is that she understands that she can lead and take care of Waverly by serving her. And it fits who canon Nicole is. Nicole is a deputy and she’s committed to serving her community, it makes sense that she would also be reflected in her relationship with Waverly.

I love ABO tropes, but I really wanted to kind of subvert them and Nicole and Waverly were the perfect vehicle for it. And as I mentioned earlier, Kendrene was absolutely on board with it, and helped develop and create this universe. The series is all the better for her joining it.

DARKWICCAN : So, and that’s something that Delayne and I talked about in the first segment of the show, is that it’s really this series is a giant subversion to the standard ABO. Is that kind of attracted you to wanting to join Jude in this universe, and write with her, Kendrene?

KENDRENE : Yes, and when she says I liked the concept, it’s basically I gave her puppy eyes and begged until she let me write with her, that’s what happened.

DARKWICCAN : Like, “Oh, please, please, please”?

KENDRENE : Yes, basically. Yeah, and I was wondering how it would be possible to write an ABO in the _Wynonna Earp_ universe. For starters, because the _Wynonna Earp_ universe is weird enough, as it is, so you have all this supernatural stuff going on, and demons, magic guns, and so it’s like does it need ABO, or not? And it does, and it doesn’t. It’s an addition that you can definitely write, y’know, in canon, as I’ve done, alone and with other people.

But what attracted me to that was definitely the concept that Jude had for Nicole and I liked that Nicole is always, even in the fics that I write alone, she’s always possessive and rough in sex, for example, but if Waverly asks her to, because it’s just not her, she’s just too much of a puppy to be. If Waverly asks her, she’s like well I guess I – y’know, she wants to make Waverly happy, so she’s like, I’ll try, but in nature, she’s a peace maker. And I know, it’s kind of a joke because the gun is named Peacemaker, but she’s more – the way I see her in the series, that she’s kind of the equaliser of the group, and she tries to balance everyone out. Except maybe regarding Waverly’s DNA tests, that was kind of her fluke moment. But I can totally understand why she did that.

So yeah, I definitely was attracted by this idea of a softer Alpha. Because, especially I was coming from _The 100_ , where everything is dark and dreary, especially if like me you like writing in canon. And Lexa is just so stoic, as a character, she has softer moments, but it’s harder to write her the way you write Nicole, because they’re just different. And I did yell them out for that small posturing, y’know, I’ll snarl first and ask questions later, I liked the idea that there could be someone that was like, “Well, yes, I’m an Alpha but I don’t let that define what I do”.

Basically, Nicole is a good person first and an Alpha second, I think.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. So, Kendrene, something that we touched on a little bit in the first couple of questions is that in ABO fiction there’s a common practice of giving Alpha females either a permanent penis or, in rut, a temporary penis. And I think that is something that potentially turns readers away, they see the g!p tag and they go “uh, nope”, but I personally kind of find it interesting, find it kind of, intriguing, where did this idea and practice come from, and what’s in symbolic purpose, if there is a symbolism, or it might not be symbolic at all? But what, kind of, where did this come from?

KENDRENE : Well, I going to disappoint you here, ‘cause I’ve done some research, and I can tell you where ABO comes from, where it started. But there was much not on g!p unless we look into the Japanese side of things, which I don’t because I don’t know that genre very well.

DARKWICCAN : The yuri type, hentai…?

KENDRENE : Yes, yes. In the hentai, there’s parts of that. But I’ve never consumed that, so I don’t know, I only read regular anime. Sorry, watched regular anime and read regular manga, so I have no idea. I wouldn’t have any idea what I’m talking about, so I’d rather not. What I can say is that ABO started in the _Supernatural_ fandom, I’m not sure if it was Dean and Castiel, who it was, the ship that it was started on. And I remember some _Star Trek_ fics with Janeway, that had g!p, although it wasn’t called like that, but it’s so back in time that I can’t… Like I remember encountering this in other fandoms before. Like I don’t think they – nobody’s doing anything new.

DARKWICCAN : Right, this isn’t just some idea, that some writer somewhere just came up with and it just caught fire, and ran with it. It’s been floating around for a while.

KENDRENE : I believe so, yes. It’s one of those things that goes in cycles, like it will pop up in a fandom then go away for a while, then pop back up in another fandom.

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha. Y’know, that actually leads nicely into the next question that we asked Jude. And her answer actually kind of echoes some of what you’ve just said. And we asked Jude: Where did the inspiration for the sub-genre of ABO come from? And what about it drew you in and made you want to write it? And she said.

JUDE81 (MJ) : It is my understanding that the ABO genre sprang from the _Supernatural_ fandom, and it was developed in the werewolf experience. Alpha/Beta/Omega was closely tied to the werewolf genre and hierarchy, but that really changed when the Clexa fandom started to embrace the genre. I think Clexa may be the biggest wlw ABO fandom at this time, and most of the ABO stories do not involve werewolves.

As to what drew me to it… I’m not entirely sure. That probably seems like a weird answer. I stumbled across it through werewolf fanfiction, and I found the Alpha/Beta/Omega hierarchy really interesting. It added an entirely new perspective to fanfiction, and what was acceptable and what wasn’t. It opened a door into fantasy that had a lot of room to play and explore and create. I personally prefer to read and write stories that are realistic in their given society with current cultural norms and structures or if it is a fantasy world. And ABO allows a lot of room for realism in a fantasy universe. I’m a huge fan of world-building and ABO allows for a lot of truly fantastical world building as entire cultures are created in the genre.

DARKWICCAN : So yeah, so, apparently there’s a common thought process that ABO has sort of emerged from _Supernatural_ fanfiction to start.

DELAYNE : Well, and then Jude also sort of answered, at least what drew her in for Nicole and Alpha, y’know in the previous question, is what, at least, for Wayhaught, what drew her into writing the ABO and wanting to subvert the trope -

DARKWICCAN : How about you, Kendrene, what drew you into writing ABO?

KENDRENE : I like the idea of the vision of society be different groups, not because I support it, I just want to put it out there, but because it’s in a way reflective of our society. And when I say this I’m thinking about, like, so if you think about ABO you have the Alphas, that are like the most – perceived as the most powerful, at the top. Then you have the Betas, that are kind of, y’know, the middle class of ABOs, and then you have the Omega, which [inaudible]. So like the Betas are the middle class, the Omegas are the poor, and the Alphas are the wealthy. Like you can take that, and if you do the transition from that fantasy to our society, which may be less patriarchal than it was, but it’s still completely ruled by wealth, and how much of it you have. And then you put your [inaudible] into the ABO world, and then you have maybe an Alpha that says “Well, you know what? I’m not okay with this”. And either is in a position of power and starts to try the system down, or is not in a position of great power, even if he’s an Alpha, and so starts with their personal relations, and say I’m going to treat people differently. Like, that’s what Nicole does, basically. She’s like, the way we describe her in our fics, when we make the comparison with other Alphas around Purgatory, that they’re all kind of getting into brawls, and they’re all kind of lording it over each other, and they’re lording it over everyone else, and Nicole’s like: “You know what? I don’t want anything to do with that, because that’s not who I am”. So, to me, the bottom line is they are these things because it’s in their biology, but they can choose to be different. You can choose to be good. Being good and bad are a choice, so when you have an Alpha that’s violent, and they’re saying “Well, I’m violent because I’m an Alpha”, it’s like you can say that’s not right, you can make people understand that’s bullshit: they’re choosing to be bad.

DELYANE : Right! I want to raise my fist up and be like, hell yeah, right now.

DARKWICCAN : And I think that is such a wonderful allegory, and also just truth, y’know, it comes down to the choices that you make. Biology might have something to do with it, or even, if we take the biology question and set that aside and change it for an income question, like you said, where the Alphas are wealthy, and the Omegas are poor, and the Betas are the middle class. You can be born into wealth, but you still have to make the choice everyday how you utilise those assets. You get make the choice; are you going to be greedy, or are you going to be kind and generous?

So, yeah, man. Okay. Well, thank you for joining us today, and sitting in the hot seat for a little while with us, and talking about this really interesting, and unique, and I think, y’know, particularly your and Jude’s writing, very evocative and…

DELAYNE : And mind-opening. It has opened my mind.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Mind-opening, absolutely. Yeah, just super well-written, just good, good work. Of course, now, we’ve had you on the hot seat for a little while, but we got one more question we got to ask. And it’s a question we ask all of our authors. So, Delayne, why don’t you ask this time, because I always do the asking.

DELAYNE : Okay. I will gladly. So, you’re stranded on a desert island, and can have only one fanfic to read. What is it?

KENDRENE : Okay, I’m going to make you laugh, because, I knew which one I wanted to talk about, and I can never remember the title, so I have like [inaudible]. I love, I love that fanfic to bits. It’s probably my favourite fanfic. And it’s What You’re Worth, by Half.

DARKWICCAN : Oh! That is such a good fic!

KENDRENE : First of all because it’s arranged marriage AU, and I’ve wanted to do one for a while, and part of the reason why I wanted to do one for a while is because I’d read hers and I was blown away by that fic. They have so much talent. That’s how I found them and now I read everything that they write. And the thing that I love the most about that fanfic is that it’s angst-y, but I love the way that Half managed to describe how Waverly and Nicole fall in love by degrees, and the little gestures and the little details. And that’s how you fall in love with a person. To me, it’s always about the little things.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

KENDRENE : That really had echoed, with me, and I really love it, I’ve read it maybe ten times now, and every time I read it I find something new, that I hadn’t noticed before. That’s how much detail there is that fanfic.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I completely agree with you, I love that fic. Absolutely love it. We -

DELAYNE : Let me write that down, okay? I know I’ve read it, re-read list? Re-read. Oh, my re-read list is huge.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. We asked Jude the same question, and her answer was You’re All I Ever Loved (So Come On and Hate Me), by Serafaerosa. I don’t know what fandom it’s from…?

KENDRENE : That’s from _The 100_ fandom, I think it’s one of the first ABOs that came out. I think, I’m not sure, I know I’ve read it. And yes, I can see why she’d choose that one. It’s a really intense ride, as well.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, nice, so nice little rollercoaster?

KENDRENE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So what we do is we always provide links to our authors desert island fics in the show notes for the episode, so we’ll be able to lead other readers to both you desert island fic,  What You’re Worth, by Half, and to Jude’s desert island fic, You’re All I Ever Loved (So Come On and Hate Me), by Serafaerosa.

KENDRENE : Sounds great.

DARKWICCAN : Well, thank you again, thank you so much for coming on. I know this is a tricky subject to talk about, and we are so grateful that you were willing to take the leap and chat about it with us.

DELAYNE : And so expertly explain things. You really helped me understand it even more now, than just discussing it with DW here.

KENDRENE : Well, again, thank you guys for having me, and it was great, I hope it went well.

DARKWICCAN : I would say it went very well. And here is a last little note from Jude.

JUDE81 (MJ) : Thank you again for allowing me to blather on about writing ABOs and writing in general. And as always, a huge thank you to my friend, Kendrene. She is a gifted author and writing with her is always a joy.

DARKWICCAN : So thank you again Kendrene and we hope that you have a wonderful rest of your evening over there in Italy.

MUSIC : Luau Festival by Eric Barone

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Thanks for joining us.

Tremendous thanks to Kendrene for coming on and to Jude81 for providing her answers via email. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro and especially to MJ for reading Jude81's answers on air.

Background music for this episode was: A Proper Story and Twisted Streets by Darren Korb; Luau Festival by Eric Barone; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast
> 
> We're also on iTunes!


	5. Haught on a Horse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Giddyup! We're saddling up with Cowgirl!Nicole to discuss Open Range Hearts, aka Haught on a Horse!
> 
> Author HaughtsCuffs joins us to talk about her very popular WayHaught Ranch AU.

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/haught-on-a-horse)

ORIGINAL AIR DATE: FEB 12, 2018

 

Read the fics!: [Open Range Hearts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7353505)

 

Cuffs' Desert Island fic: ['They Say Bad Things Happen For A Reason' by lynnearlington](http://archiveofourown.org/works/748316) (Glee Fandom) 

 

TRANSCRIPT FOR THE DEAF AND HOH BY FLYING FANATIC

 

EFA EPISODE 05 – HAUGHT ON A HORSE

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody and welcome to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction, I am your host DarkWiccan and with me is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we’ve made it to five whole episodes!

DELAYNE : Oh my gosh. Five? Really? Wow.

DARKWICCAN : I know, right? It's - again, I know, people listening are going yeah, okay, five. But it's like, you guys, you don't understand, work goes into this, my friends.

DELAYNE : Along with busy other stuff going on right now. So I'm impressed with our - well, your dedication, I just sort of show up and go along for the ride, like I feel.

DARKWICCAN : I - well both of us, y'know, we have busy day jobs and part of doing a fic podcast, and having a fic Twitter and Facebook page, means you have to read a lot of fic.

DELAYNE : Which we do, in the first place, that's why we started this. We read a lot anyway, but, yeah, now it's a - [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : I feel like my intake has doubled. But, something you were talking about before we started recording, Delayne, is that this is our last - what did you say? - it's our last recording session before...?

DELAYNE : Before we find out people's opinions of our - of episode number one. one.

DARKWICCAN : I know! Yes. 'Cause we record, y'know, well in advance from a multitude of reasons, especially so that our transcribers have time to - we have wonderful volunteer transcribers who transcribe our episodes, for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

DELAYNE : And that preview was fantastic.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, the preview of the transcription, yeah. Yeah. We want the transcriptions to go up at the same time the episode airs, so that no-one's having to wait for the content. So, that's a huge reason why we record so far in advance. And a huge thank you to our three transcribers: Jordan; FlyingFanatic and; Climb. We are incredibly grateful to them for taking the time out of their incredibly busy schedules, to sit down and listen to us talk at them for hours and hours on end.

DELAYNE : And then actually write down all that we're saying. And, well, figure out what we're saying, 'cause I don't always know what I'm saying. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yes. We have three transcribers because we talk a lot, and we talk fast, and we don't ever want this job to fall onto any one person, so these three amazing volunteers stepped up to the plate and we are so, so grateful.

DELAYNE : Unbelievably grateful.

DARKWICCAN : Unbelievably grateful, yeah. So, yeah, but what that means is that we've got now five episodes, and we have no idea what people think yet. So -

DELAYNE : So, next time we record, we will know. That's kind of scary.

DARKWICCAN : And hopefully our egos won't have taken too hard of a bruising. [laughter] But we're not here for our egos, we're here for the fics, right?

DELAYNE : Yes!

DARKWICCAN : And this week we're excited because we're going to be talking about probably one of the most popular, and most iconic fics in the Wynonna Earp fandom, which is colloquially known as Haught On A Horse, but its actual title -

DELAYNE : Is Open Range Hearts.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. And on AO3 it's by thewaywedo33. But on Twitter the same author goes by a different name, which is Haughts - HaughtsCuffs, yes.

DELAYNE : Haughts - oh, HaughtsCuffs.

DARKWICCAN : HaughtsCuffs, as in Sheriff Haught's - or Officer Haught's - cuffs, or just Cuffs for short.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So - which is a thing that's unique to writing fic, is that sometimes you have authors that have multiple handles. But for the purposes of today's show we're going to be referring to Cuffs as Cuffs, because thewaywedo33 is a bit of a mouthful. [laughter]

DELAYNE : And Cuffs is much quicker.

DARKWICCAN : So again, it's Open Range Hearts, and this is the first fic, of the fics that we've talked about so far on this show, where Nicole Haught is not an officer of the law. Nor does she have aspirations to be an officer of the law, nor does she come from any sort of military or police background in any way.

DELAYNE : Right? It's just a cattle ranch AU, and Nicole is just a cowgirl.

DARKWICCAN : Well, she's more than just a cowgirl. I mean, she's pretty kick-ass.

DELAYNE : Which, I mean, I understand wanting to write a cattle ranch AU, because that beautiful being, in a Stetson... [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, tell me about it.

DELAYNE : Right?! Very inspiring.

DARKWICCAN : It is, it is such an inspiring image. I kind of, with the new outfit - the new uniform - the tactical uniform on the show, I really, I don’t miss the khakis, I know a lot of people miss the khakis, but what I miss is the hat. I miss that hat.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN :  But luckily in this fic we get to imagine Nicole in a Stetson all we want. [laughter]

DELAYNE : And on a horse. 'Cause this is Haught On A Horse.

DARKWICCAN : But you were saying before, one of you favorite moments is actually the very first time that Doc introduces Nicole to Wynonna.

DELAYNE : Right, so they show up at the ranch, and before even Doc can say anything, Wynonna steps out asking for alcohol. Y'know, sees this other person with Doc, and, y'know, like, oh, this is either our new ranch hand, or you brought someone to spice up our next Friday night.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] And thus, in that simple exchange, Cuffs has immediately cemented who Wynonna is, in this story.

DELAYNE : It really does exemplify this hilarious, funny, absolutely funny but wise-cracking smart-ass. I just, I love this.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, this is the Wynonna that we'd get on the show, I think, if she didn't have the burden of the curse. But also not the over-the-top-ness of the goo, right?

DELAYNE : Oh, right.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah? And Cuffs writes her - I just feel like when Cuffs was writing any of Wynonna's scenes, she was just sitting there with a shit-eating grin on her face, behind her computer. Just cackling quietly to herself, because this Wynonna is hilarious, and super whip-quick with the puns, and the jokes, and the teasing. And I love the Wynaught BroTP that Cuffs has created for this story, I just -

DELAYNE : Right? 'Cause it's not just Wynonna, Nicole can serve it right back, just as easily.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, and I love that, I love that, I love that Nicole here is so gloves off. Like, the minute she figures out who Wynonna is and how to communicate with her, she's like, "Okay, this is how we communicate, we sass each other." And she does not hold back, and I just... when the two of them get going, it is absolutely hilarious, and I love, I love it so much.

DELAYNE : And it's more than just one scene, there's multiple scenes we get to see them really... bond?

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah, no, they really - they like each other, yeah, they're buds. It's so, it's that kind of easy, sort of, shit-throwing that you can do with a close friend. We're that comfortable, that you're like, I can basically say whatever, to get you riled up, and you know it's all in fun, but you're going to come right back at me, and we're just going to sit here riling each other up. [laughter]

DELAYNE : Right? That’s how I knew I had finally reached good friends with you, is when I could give you shit.

DARKWICCAN : And of course I throw it right back at you.

DELAYNE : Yes! We’ve reached the giving each other shit point of friendship. I love it.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, man. Another thing – one of the things that plays throughout the entire story, all thirteen chapters, and then the additional one-shot follow up, is that Wynonna hates being called, “Boss,” right? And Nicole – “Hey, Boss” – and Nicole hates it when Wynonna calls her, “Haught-stuff.” So, every time Wynonna calls Nicole, “Haught-stuff,” Nicole slaps back with, “Okay, Boss,” and immediately gets a middle finger right in the face. But they’re not the only great friendship happening on this ranch.

DELAYNE : Right? And this is actually one of my favorites, is Doc and Nicole are total bros.

DARKWICCAN : They’re total bros! [laughter] That’s the perfect way of putting it! They are totally bros. And, okay, so like, this takes place in, essentially, reality, right. There are no Revenants, there’s no curse, there’s no supernatural what-not going on, so all the characters are human, with no extra, y’know, extra fancy-smansy abilities beyond just being human.

And so that includes Doc, so Doc isn’t and immortal, he’s just a guy, who’s probably in his early forties, or late thirties. And, but even so, Cuffs does this great nod to the show, where she has Nicole constantly refer to Doc as, “Old man,” and it pisses him off so bad.

DELAYNE : Does he have any zingers back, I mean, like, y’know Wynonna and Nicole have, have “Boss” and “Haught-stuff,” does –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, he does, he does, but it changes up every time.

DELAYNE : Okay, it’s not a consistent –

DARKWICCAN : It’s not consistent, and it’s usually he makes a dig at her relationship with Waverly.

DELAYNE : Right. That seems to be the main theme, I was wondering if there was something else, maybe I missed that was more obvious. ‘Cause I miss obvious things, that’s how I am.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, but that’s what I love about you. [laughter] But, yeah, so they also, similar to Nicole and Wynonna, when Nicole and Doc do razz each other, but not on anywhere near the same level.

DELAYNE : No.

DARKWICCAN : But they are total bros, you’re absolutely right, and I just love that.

DELAYNE : They have an understanding of each other that is, y’know, a little different than –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. They’re almost like...

DELAYNE : On a different level.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s almost like a brother-sister vibe, kind of.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : But as I touched on a second ago, yeah, Doc likes to razz Nicole about her relationship with Waverly, which kind of makes me circle back around to the fact that yes, this is a _Wynonna_ fic, but like, ninety percent of the Earp fics in the fandom, it’s really a Wayhaught fic.

DELAYNE : It’s definitely a Wayhaught fic, ‘cause:

  1. a) It follows Nicole, it’s her point of view, and;
  2. b) We definitely have that build up, that bit of a slow, angsty burn – not super slow –



DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s more of a semi-slow. Because the story’s only thirteen chapters, so –

DELAYNE : And – and there’s an epic scene in chapter four, where they _reveal._

DARKWICCAN : Yes. Oh my gosh. I love that scene so much. It reminded me a lot of, like – well this is a bit of an extreme example – but you know, like, the bodice-ripper paperback novels? Y’know, where like, there’s - [laughter] But you know what I mean! So basically –

DELAYNE : [laughter] I do, actually, unfortunately.

DARKWICCAN : And how in those stories, people hide their emotions by just being really angry at each other? [laughter] Well, like, Waverly’s angry a lot, and it’s because she’s trying to come to terms with, and also kind of cover up, this attraction she has for Nicole. So, when they finally do, um, admit their feelings for each other, it’s in a thunderstorm, and they’re taking shelter in the barn, and it’s all very intense, and –

DELAYNE : Thunder clapping, and...

DARKWICCAN : Yes. The thunder, and the lightning, and the rain sweeping in through the barn door –

DELAYNE : Flashing in the eyes!

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : Eyes flashing, with lightning and anger.

DARKWICCAN : It is anger, or is it _lust_?

DELAYNE : [laughter] Thinly veiled lust.

DARKWICCAN : Really no veils. There are no veils. The veils have gone. The veils got whipped away with the violent wind, in the thunderstorm. [laughter] But even so, even so, again we’ve talked about how it’s really perfect, it’s wonderful when authors stick to characters at their core. Staying true to who characters are at their core, their personalities, and their values, and things like that.

And Cuffs does that here, with everybody in the story, but really importantly, in this particular scene that we’re referring to, it is very dramatic, and very romantic, and they start to get carried away, but Nicole, being Nicole, slows things down. Which is just great, ‘cause I think honestly we would have burnt out too quickly if she hadn’t. So, it’s again –

DELAYNE : It was also the timing within the story, too, that would have –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : – Been a... downer? How do I say this without spoiling too much?

DARKWICCAN : Oh, absolutely. And, speaking of timing, I love how Cuffs uses the activity on the ranch as sort of a way of communicating time passage, so you get a real clear idea of how much time is truly passing on the ranch.

DELAYNE : ‘Cause you have the spring calving, and then you have the – well, there’s always fencing fixing, that’s pretty much constant – and then, yeah, moving the cows around in the pastures.

DARKWICCAN : And this is something you know a lot about, personally.

DELAYNE : Yes, I do. I grew up in a farm, it was only twenty-five acres –

DARKWICCAN : “Only.”

DELAYNE : Well, it’s now twenty-five acres. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : “Only twenty-five,” she says.

DELAYNE : Well, if you imagine the scale of the ranch that’s implied in this, these are hundreds, almost thousands of acres, some of these ranches.

DARKWICCAN : Geez!

DELAYNE : I mean, that’s why you _need_ , that’s why you need so many ranch hands. Twenty-five acres, you just put the cows on the pasture and you don’t worry about it, occasionally round ‘em up when they have the calves.

DARKWICCAN : So you had –

DELAYNE : So yes, I did grow up on a farm. I call it a farm, we did have cows –

DARKWICCAN : Did you have a cow named Buttercup?

DELAYNE : [laughter] We did not have a cow named Buttercup. And I know this, because I actually called my mother. Because we do name _all_ of our cows, and my mother remembers all of their names.

DARKWICCAN : That’s really impressive.

DELAYNE : And she goes, “No, we did not have a Buttercup, but ooh, that sounds like a good name.”

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, that’s – so maybe by the calving, the spring calving, you’ll have a Buttercup?

DELAYNE : Yeah, it’s very much possible, though I believe in this fic it seems to indicate, y’know, Nicole talks about looking out for him, so Buttercup is apparently a boy, not that we’ve ever really been specifically gendered with cow names, necessarily, but would imagine my mother would call Buttercup a female.

DARKWICCAN : But this, this calf that we’re talking about is – plays a predominant role in the love story between [laughter] between Waverly and Nicole.

DELAYNE : It’s a very _important_ role, because, y’know, in calving season there’s always complications, especially on such a large ranch, you’re going to have at least one. Of course it’s going to be conveniently when Nicole’s on watch, and of course, very sensitive Waverly is going to be very concerned about the calf as well.

DARKWICCAN : But, in addition to the calves, and the other activity happening on the ranch, and the love story, and the Wynaught BroTP, and the Doc/Nicole BroTP, we also have a villain, that is – has nefarious plans. And it’s sort of the B-plot, it’s the B-plot that kind of shifts into the A-plot, and then goes back into the B-plot. Or rather, it’s a B-plot that then becomes the A-plot.

DELAYNE : Right.

DARKWICCAN : Like we said before, there are no, there are no, there’s no curse, there’s no demons, nothing like that. But we do have Bobo in this story, because Bobo can’t be a demon, he just has to be a, a nasty guy. And he, yeah.

DELAYNE : An asshole.

DARKWICCAN : He has to be an asshole, and he’s the owner of the ranch over yonder, Revenant Ranch.

DELAYNE : You really can say next, door, it’s just that the next door down is miles and miles away.

DARKWICCAN : True. But, I think yonder gives a better picture of distance. [DELAYNE laughs] But, basically, Bobo wants Earp ranch for his own reasons. And I really like the way that Cuffs, kind of, developed the idea, and the backstory for why Bobo wants the ranch. And what had gone on prior to Wynonna and Waverly taking over the ranch, and things that had happened that they didn’t know about that come to light throughout the story. But, I mean, it’s nice, it’s a very nice resolution too, at the end. Very satisfying.

DELAYNE : And it’s - and this, y’know, this villainous plot is very, does a very good nod to canon too, in the way that it incorporates that whole storyline, really.

DARKWICCAN : And it’s - Cuffs does a really good job of, yeah, incorporating those nods, but still it’s an original story. It’s an original idea, yeah.

DELAYNE : Yes. So, a random thing. When Champ is shown, very briefly -

DARKWICCAN : Thankfully.

DELAYNE : - my favorite line [laughter] is where Nicole’s like, “You can call him Biff.” [laughter] And then she goes oh - learns his name is Champ - and goes, “Oh, pretty much.” I just - yeah, he’s a total Biff.

DARKWICCAN : He is, totally, he is a total Biff.

DELAYNE : And then, sort of some other, y’know, random characters that show up. Agent Lucado, of the Lifestock Board. [laughter] And I do like how Nedley and Shorty are ranch hands, as well, which we have to do some finagling, so when they go to the bar it’s just Gus’s. And when the Sherriff does appear: it’s Chrissy!

DARKWICCAN : Which - I love that. I love that. And I loved how proud Randy is of her, for going to law enforcement and becoming Sherriff.

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : It’s very sweet. It’s very sweet.

DELAYNE : It is.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, there are a lot of really, really great nods to the show, but still maintaining a - the original idea of Haught On A Horse, and the Earp Ranch.

DELAYNE : Oh, and then, another great nod; “Where’s the stampede?”

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Yes, instead of where’s the hold up - [laughter]

DELAYNE : “Where’s the stampede? ‘Cause we’re on a ranch...”

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, there are so many really, what feel like very accurate details to ranch life, and the management of a ranch, and the - everything that needs to be accomplished, y’know, both on a daily and a seasonal basis, that I just - I can’t help but wonder if Cuffs grew up on a ranch. Or, works on - has worked on a ranch, or has some sort of background there. But the good news is that we get to ask her!

DELAYNE : Oh, I love these lead-ins.

DARKWICCAN : Don’t you love them? Completely off the cuff - hey! Off the cuff. [laughter]

DELAYNE : Uh, yeah, I agree with your assessment, that Cuffs probably knows what she’s talking about, ‘cause it looks fairly accurate to me, from me growing up on a farm, and my schooling, I may have written a crazy management plan for a ranch or two.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, cool, so you can absolutely - you can grill her, you can be like, “Alright,” I don’t know the terminology, so I can’t...

DELAYNE : “Where are your credentials, where’d you go to school?” [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Okay, well lets you and I stop yapping at each other, and let’s move on to segment two, where we can talk to Cuffs. [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : A Cowboy Reborn by Bytheway-May

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody, and welcome back to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction, I am your host, Darkwiccan. Unfortunately Delayne is not able to join us for segment two, as she is currently on the road travelling, but I am lucky enough to have my very dear friend, Laragh, joining us. Laragh, say hi!

LARAGH : Hi, everyone.

DARKWICCAN : Thank you so much for coming on, I really appreciate you pitching in.

LARAGH : Happy to be here.

DARKWICCAN : But the reason that we’re both here is so that we can talk to the author of Open Range Hearts, known on AO3 as thewaywedo33, but known to us, and Twitter, as HaughtsCuffs, here simply Cuffs. Cuffs, welcome to the show.

CUFFS : Hi guys, thanks for having me.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, we are thrilled to have you. [laughter] I know for me, Delayne and I, talking in segment one, we were talking about how, y’know, this is such a unique fiction because it’s really the first one we have where Nicole doesn’t come from any sort of a law enforcement background, or aspirations to be in law enforcement, she’s - she’s a cowgirl, through and through. So, that’s unique, for the fanfics that we’ve been talking about so far. So, that’s - for us, that’s exciting. That, and it’s just a great story.

How did you get into writing fiction?

CUFFS : Y’know, it was several years back, actually, the fandom that I usually say should not be named, but the _Glee_ fandom. I did - I know I watched the first couple of season of the show, and I hate to admit it, but I was a Santana and Brittany stan.

And I kind of discovered fanfiction through that, just reading it, and after a couple of years of reading it - I branched out to other fandoms - and, I don’t know, just, I’d always kind of written, on and off, for myself through the years, and I was just like, this seems like a lot of fun, I want to try my hand at it. And I just started to give it a shot.

DARKWICCAN : And how did you get into _Wynonna Earp_?

CUFFS : So that, I started watching the show I think from episode three, in season one. And I loved it, and I was live-tweeting, and I just, I fell in love with Wayhaught, and their dynamic, and all the characters really, and I just - I had to write them, like it felt like something I _had_ to do.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, I think that’s something that Laragh and I can relate to as well. What do you say, Laragh?

LARAGH : Absolutely. Yep. It’s just they’re - they’re perfect character material for writing and for watching, they’re just...

DARKWICCAN : They are, they absolutely are. So, speaking of being inspired, and just having to write, did the inspiration for Open Range Hearts come from, like, a single, vivid scene in your mind, or was it like, did you have the entire story clear to you right from where you started to put fingertip to keyboard?

CUFFS : Oh, man. So, it definitely started with a single vivid scene. An image in my head, and what it was is I’d just re-watched episode seven, Walking After Midnight, and there’s that great scene at the end where Wynonna and Nicole are about to go murder a stack of pancakes, and Nicole and Waverly, kind of, are looking at each other.

Y’know, Waverly’s on the porch, and they have the shy smiles, and the hand wave, and the fleeting eye contact, and it’s just, like, such a great scene. I love it. And I don’t know why, but I was thinking about it, and for some reason, Nicole Haught was on a horse, in my head, when I was thinking about it. Like, I was just picturing it as this moment in a western movie, y’know, this classic romantic thing.

And it just spiraled out of control from there, where I was like, okay, well, how - what world could that scene take place, like that, with horses. And it just grew, and grew from there.

DARKWICCAN : That’s terrific, I love that your very first image was Haught on a horse, and this fic series is known as Haught On A Horse.

[laughter]

CUFFS : Yes, and that is where that comes from, I was kinda like, that’s it’s like, AKA, y’know, Haught On A Horse. Needed to see.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, man, that is - that’s terrific. Yeah, I think you absolutely have ownership of that, of that idea, for sure. Or at least, coming up with it and bringing it to life, to start.

CUFFS : Yeah, I wouldn’t say - y’know, it’s a sci-fi western, so it’s not really crazy to conceive of these characters in more of a western setting. But I think I just kind of threw it out there first, was lucky enough to do that.

DARKWICCAN : You had, ahead of everybody else who was maybe mulling over the notion.

CUFFS : Exactly.

DARKWICCAN : Nice, nicely done.

LARAGH : I think it’s the perfect example of an AU that fits the characters, instead of trying to fit the characters into a particular AU. It just - it just goes there naturally.

CUFFS : Yes, I agree. Thank you. I’m always like, it’s not like I’m really painting outside the lines that much, just kind of touching up some colors differently, y’know?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, more vivid, more south-west.

CUFFS : Yes.

LARAGH : And the writing - the writing, was, I found, really vivid, and really easy to imagine. And I have ADD, so sometimes I really struggle to get into fics, but when it’s vivid like that, I just... y’know, it just flows, you just read it. So, I kind of have - from that, I kind of have to ask, do you have any personal experience branding cows?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, let me piggy-back on that a little bit. Do you have personal experience branding cows, because you are writing from experience working on a ranch yourself?

CUFFS : [laughter] Uh, so, the answer to both questions is no. And for the branding cows part, thankfully no. I - so, to start from the beginning, I grew up in a very rural area, around a lot of farms, my grandfather had horses, so I grew up riding horses, mucking out stalls. I helped to bale hay, I have stacked more wood in my life than I can even fathom.

So, I’ve done stuff like that, but never actually worked on a ranch. And, like I said, certainly have not branded cow [sic].

And, actually, the method I mention in the story I just happened to come across that, in research, that nowadays they can kind of freeze the pattern, so the hair comes off, instead of actually burning it into the cow’s, uh, flesh. And I was like, cool, cool, okay, like I can live with that, because yeah, I eat meat, and I’m not naïve about the situation, but I still think, y’know, cows should be treated humanely, so, kind of wanted to add that little, little part to the story.

DARKWICCAN : And I got to agree with you, because I think that Waverly definitely would have opted for the more humane method of marking, over using, yeah, the traditional method of branding. So, good call there.

CUFFS : Thank you. I agree with you.

DARKWICCAN : Really cool thing about this story is you really do a great job of grabbing those, kind of, tertiary characters that exist within the world of _Wynonna Earp_ , and bringing them into the ranch as more fleshed out, involved characters. Laragh, did - I think Delayne had a thought on that actually. I don’t have it in front of me -

LARAGH : Yeah, we were talking about it, and she really loved that included Fish and Levi, because that’s not - those aren’t really, y’know, characters that we see much at all, or if they do, it’s just in Revenant form. So, yeah, what was the process, or what made you think, “Oh, I’m going to use those characters”?

CUFFS : Ah, so that’s a great question, because that was a process. When I originally conceived of the story, the ranch hands where just Doc, Dolls, Shorty, Nedley, and Nicole. And that was it.

And I knew that since there wasn’t going to be a supernatural element to the story, the conflict was going to be Revenant’s ranch, and Bobo, and his stuff. And I wanted there to be the saboteur, the mole. So, the very first version of this story, Nedley was going to be the bad guy.

DARKWICCAN : Oooh.

CUFFS : Right? Deep gasp. But I have to say, right from the beginning, it didn’t feel quite right, but I kind of, I started to brainstorm with that in place, and was coming up with different scenes, and one of the first scenes I thought of was after the barn fire, when Nicole and Waverly are outed in front of everybody, and the line, “I guess sleeping with the boss means you’re above suspicion,” I think it’s something like that.

And picturing the scene, I could not get Nedley to say it. Because he wouldn’t. That’s not who Nedley is on the show, it’s poor characterisation, and I was basically like, “You got to re-think this, or the story’s not happening at all.”

So at that point, I started to think about the other tertiary characters, like you said, from season one, and right away Levi jumped out at me. I was like, “Of course, this feels perfect.” And once I decided to include him, it was just obvious to include Fish too, I enjoyed that, I enjoyed the one episode he was in, they were fun, and I thought it would be kind of a nice - nice thing to flesh them out more for the story.

DARKWICCAN : I thought it was really interesting how you made the choice to have their relationship with each other be known but not discussed.

LARAGH : Yes, and I felt like I wanted that on purpose for that reveal scene moment I talked about, where Levi kind of outs them, because it’s kind of a parallel thing, where like “Yeah, you guys are together, we don’t talk about, why would you do this to them?” Y’know?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah.

CUFFS : So, and then kind of makes you dislike Levi even more, which I know isn’t all that difficult, but - you want your bad guy to be a bad guy, right?

DARKWICCAN : Right, yeah, exactly. And speaking of bad guys, you did a really terrific job in taking Bobo away from being an actual Revenant, to being the owner of Revenant Ranch.

[laughter]

CUFFS : Yeah, that worked out well, I’m happy with how that came out. I was like, “Oh, good, he’s still, still kind of menacing, still a jerk, so, that works.”

DARKWICCAN : Yes, it absolutely works. So, you wrote the thirteen chapter piece for the main fic, Open Range Hearts, and then you went back and you wrote a one-shot sequel from Waverly’s point of view, which was just fantastic. So do you plan on exploring this world more, or do you think you’ve kind of sewn it up where you like it?

CUFFS : Oh, no, absolutely not. I love this world, heart and soul, anybody who follows me on any platform is aware of that. I don’t think I’ll ever fully shut the door on it, it’s just a matter of if the right idea strikes. So, whether that’s some one-shots here and there, from different perspectives, or what-not, or a full sequel, if the right idea comes along I will right it.

DARKWICCAN : Excellent. [laughter] I know that I will be waiting on the edge of my seat for that announcement. That’ll be amazing.

CUFFS : [laughter] Oh, thank you. I hope so, y’know, it could be terrible, who knows.

DARKWICCAN : I seriously doubt that. It’s a possibility, but... [laughter]

CUFFS : Crazier things, right?

LARAGH : Sorry, I have to ask you, okay, as like a die-hard Wynaught BroTP shipper, personally, they’re just like my favorite - apart from Wayhaught - they’re my favorite relationship in the whole show, which did you prefer to write? Was it Wynonna and Nicole’s friendship, or Doc and Nicole’s friendship?

CUFFS : Oh, man. So, I have a lot of fun writing both, and I do enjoy Doc and Nicole a lot, but yeah, Wynonna and Nicole, also my second favorite relationship on the show. And in the story, like, that’s my heart. I love the way they play off each other, the way they kind of, y’know, the back and forth, their different personalities that fit together. But they’re both very strong people, but they just work, and I adore writing them.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, well, something that Delayne and I were talking about in segment one was how Nicole absolutely rises to the occasion of sassing back to Wynonna. Like, the minute she realizes that this is how Wynonna communicates, she’s like, “Okay, let’s do this!”

CUFFS : Yes, and that was a very deliberate choice. I wanted them to both be on equal footing, and to show that they do understand each other, and that yes, Nicole figures out very quickly how to communicate, “In Wynonna,” as we call it, y’know?

DARKWICCAN : She’s the Wynonna whisperer.

CUFFS : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : That might also be true on the show, too. Not to as great an extent as in your story, but I think on the show Nicole is getting a little more comfortable with -

CUFFS : I absolutely agree, y’know, she says what needs to be said, and I think that Wynonna respects that, and appreciates it, and that’s why, y’know, we get the scene in the finale that she trusts Nicole with Alice Michelle, to get her out of town. And I think that absolutely is because she respects Nicole’s strong personality as well, y’know?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, they - [laughter] I would say, like, if we were looking at this from a D&D, sort of role-playing type of situation, Wynonna is a chaotic good, and Nicole is lawful good.

CUFFS : I love that, that’s perfect. Yes. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : They might be on the same side but they’re definitely going - approaching things in a completely different way.

CUFFS : Exactly.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Oh, man. So, okay, so the relationship between Waverly and Nicole, something that I notice was that Waverly, sort of, reacted to her attraction to Nicole by being angry a lot. And then of course they have that dramatic moment in the barn, and the rain, and all that, so it all sort of culminates into this big moment. I think that, y’know, Waverly is definitely volatile that way, so I’m wondering, did you just kind of pick that up from her characterisation on the show, and just, sort of, expand on it?

CUFFS : Yes, oh yes, absolutely. So yeah, she is that way in the show, and then, y’know, I started to think about, well, dropping her into this situation on the ranch, and the way that I twisted the storyline a little with Willa, and Wynonna, and what-not, y’know, would it draw it a little bit more out of her personality? And I thought that it would, especially also living on a ranch with a bunch of dudes, y’know, Doc and Dolls, y’know, fighting, and everything else. I just, I felt like that would be a component that might come out a little bit more when she’s feeling, y’know, nervous, or stressed, or these new feelings for Nicole. She might, kind of, get her anger on a little bit more.

DARKWICCAN : But Nicole, ultimately, is the balm that soothes the beast inside.

CUFFS : Absolutely. I just think, y’know, she - they understand each other so well. I think especially in the beginning, Nicole with Waverly, and she’s able to be so patient because she gets that about her, y’know?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that was something where it’s like, I have to admit, I don’t know that - y’know, I would have been as patient but only because I’m easily whipped. [laughter] but, y’know, I think I would have gotten a lot frustrated, more quickly - a lot more frustrated more quickly - than Nicole did. And that kind of fear, of like, “Is this something you really want, or am I - what am I, to you?”

CUFFS : Yeah. I just - part of Nicole’s characterisation, for me, a big part of it is that she is so level-headed most of the time. And so, I think that would play into the situation, allowing her to be calmer than - I agree with you, I don’t know that I also would have been able to be so chill about it, but it felt right for her.

And also, y’know, working in that line of work for so long, I made sure to, kind of, include a couple lines about, y’know, how she feels like it’s important to be, kind of, a calm individual doing that line of work. And so, I think that kind of helps a little bit too, there.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely.

LARAGH : What you guys were saying about Nicole being kind of the soothing balm for Waverly, I think that’s really nice part of her character in general, because I feel like Waverly does that for Wynonna. And, y’know, it’s nice that Waverly, kind of, gets to get that, that support as well, because I feel like sometimes it’s all - all her energy is on Wynonna, and she needs Nicole as the back-up, just, kind of, there to be - just there for her, just knowing that she has someone there, because she just didn’t for a long time.

CUFFS : Yeah, that is an excellent point, and I think that is true on the show as well, but I feel like that is definitely true in what I tried to write as well. Y’know, a big part of it is, again, I think Waverly feels like for the first time someone is seeing just her. Y’know, Nicole really makes her feel like, “I’m worthwhile, and here’s this person that really sees me, and wants to spend time with me, and be around me.” And I think that’s huge for her.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely. I think that, Laragh, exactly like you said, Waverly is the balm to Wynonna’s soul, and so who - Waverly needs that from somebody, and Nicole is perfect for that. But, kind of jumping back to the BroTP situation, with Wynonna and Nicole, when Wynonna basically forces Nicole to go to the bar with her -

CUFFS : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - your Nicole managed to - I mean, she got a buzz, she got a buzz on - but she managed to hold herself together and not get a little goofy, like we saw in the series. You think that’s because it was before season two aired when you wrote this, and so we didn’t really - it was more of a speculation how would Nicole act while - while under the influence?

CUFFS : Totally. We did not have the joy of drunk Haught to - y’know, I couldn’t draw from that yet, and I felt like in that scene, too, Nicole would be very cognizant of not getting too sloppy, since at that point in the story, y’know, she’s sleeping with Wynonna’s sister. They have a relationship going on, and she would really want to make sure not to slip up and reveal that. So I felt like that was a big motivation in that scene as well for her to, kind of, _just_ make sure she’s sober enough to not start just spilling all the beans.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter] Or acting inappropriately, in some way.

CUFFS : Yeah, exactly. Y’know, Waverly shows up and she’s drunk, and just launches herself at her face, y’know?

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Kind of the -

CUFFS : Friendship kiss, it’s fine.

DARKWICCAN : Sort of the reverse of how it happened on the show, instead of Waverly attacking Nicole’s face, it’s Nicole attacking Waverly’s face.

[laughter]

CUFFS : Yes, exactly. It’s very discrete, y’know?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Discrete face-tackage. Face-tackage? I meant face attackage. [laughter] Oh, man. What was your favorite moment, or series of moments, to write in this story?

CUFFS : Okay, so that - whew - there are several. The first couple obvious ones are, of course, the first horseback ride for them together, I think in chapter two, because that was an image that was so strong in my head, early on, that I wanted that to happen. Y’know, that’s like your classic romantic Western moment.

And then, of course, the barn, with the rain. Y’know, their first kiss, I love that scene. I just love that we get the little bit of tension in the build-up, and they finally give in.

But one that maybe people wouldn’t necessarily think about, but that’s really a favorite of mine, is after Nicole’s been avoiding Waverly for a couple of weeks, after they’re outed, and there’s, kind of, some angst and what-not, and Waverly really just, kind of, comes after her, like “What the hell’s going on.”

When they end up in Nicole’s cabin, and they kind of, y’know - well, first they sex it out, but - [laughter] - and, y’know -

DARKWICCAN : The best sex is make-up sex, so.

CUFFS : Yes, exactly. But then they talk it out, and the reason I love that little scene is for me I felt like that was the first time I really got to highlight that Waverly understands Nicole as well. Because the story’s told, y’know, from Nicole’s perspective, and so sometimes it’s hard to know where Waverly’s at, and that moment, kind of, when Waverly realizes how much it affects Nicole to think that Waverly could have thought, y’know, that she was the bad guy, that she burned down the barn. I felt like it gave me the chance to show that - that Waverly understands her too, she gets how devastating that would be, and they get to have a nice little conversation. So, I personally love that scene.

DARKWICCAN : That is such a great point. I don’t think that - it hadn’t even, because again we’re looking at everything from Nicole’s point of view - you’re so - you’re absolutely right, that’s when we understand that Waverly - that Waverly understands.

CUFFS : Yeah, yeah. I just - I don’t know, and that’s not like a, “Oh, great writing,” it just - that - that’s how that moment was for me, in my mind, even writing and it and editing it, it was just so important to me to show that, y’know, in the beginning, Nicole obviously knows her feelings, and you sometimes feel like they’re on unequal footing, and that moment for me was about putting them on the same level.

DARKWICCAN : I’d have to say you succeeded, bravo. Or brava, I would say.

CUFFS : [laughter] Thank you.

LARAGH : This is one of the very first fanfictions - Wayhaught fanfics I ever read, ‘cause I jumped in in the middle of season two, because DW kept poking me until I would watch.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Sorry, not sorry.

CUFFS : Good choice, good choice.

LARAGH : And this was one of the first fics that she recommended to me. So it’s just, for me, it’s kind of like, like my comfort blanket. Sometimes I go back and re-read chapters, and re-read scenes, because it just - it’s so warming and comforting to me. So, I just, in general I want to just say thanks for writing it, because I really appreciate that this was, sort of, my introduction into Wayhaught fanfic, and particularly Wayhaught AU.

CUFFS : Aw, thank you, that’s - it never gets old to hear that somebody enjoyed this story. I love it too, it’s one of those things where, like, I kind of forget sometimes. I’m like, “Oh yeah, I wrote that.” ‘Cause I love the world too, and just thank you for giving it a chance, thank you for even taking the time to read some of it. Y’know, I’m always - I’m aware that nobody has to, y’know, take the time to check out something I wrote, so when they do I’m very appreciative. And I’m glad you enjoyed it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I totally finagled, and pushed, and prodded Laragh into this fandom, and it’s my greatest - one of my greatest achievements, I think. And yes, part of how I did it was slipping her your fic. So - [laughter]

CUFFS : Nice, nice. I’m glad I could be the gateway drug, y’know?

DARKWICCAN : Yes, absolutely, we’re the infection vector, I really appreciate it. [laughter] Oh, man. Well, thank you so much, Cuffs, for coming on, we really appreciate you taking time out of your day to join us, here today, and being on the hot seat with us, is how I say it, often, to our guests. But we really only had you on a warm seat, so now we’re going to crank it up, and hit you with a question. Hit you with a question that we ask all of our authors, so brace yourself.

CUFFS : Alright.

DARKWICCAN : You’re stranded on a desert island, and can have only one fanfic to read. What is it?

CUFFS : Oh, oof. Okay. Well, first of all - so, I know this is a _Wynonna Earp_ fanfic podcast, but -

DARKWICCAN : But you’re allowed to recommend any fandom.

CUFFS : Yeah, I gotta go back. And for a reason, I’ll give the reason. But I first want to give, y’know, the shout out. The writers in this fandom are so talented, and there is so much amazing work in this fandom, which I think is why there can be a podcast for the fanfic. And I truly love it all, so I just want to get that out there first. But if I could only have one on that desert island, I have to go back to when I first started reading the fanfiction, again, for [mumbles] _Glee_. And, I had been reading it for a little bit, and I came across a story, and this is back in the day of Livejournal, I don’t know if anybody remembers that.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, Livejournal. [laughter]

CUFFS : Yep, and I read this story by lynnearlington, They Say Bad Things Happen For A Reason. And the reason I pick that one is it actually, just, it changed my perception of what fanfiction could be. Because that story is just - if you haven’t read it, and you’re willing to delve back into, y’know, Brittany and Santana, and Glee, I don’t know if anybody would want to - but it’s sexy, and funny, and angsty, and the storyline’s good, and it just - it really grabbed me, and I was like, “Huh. So, you really can, you can write anything, you can write amazing things in fanfiction.” And it kind of inspired me, and so I go back and read it every couple of years, just to remind myself. It’s just a great fic, so that’s the one I have to go with.

DARKWICCAN : Is it still on Livejournal, or has it migrated?

CUFFS : It has migrated, I believe, yeah. Last time I read it, it was on AO3, so you can find it there.

DARKWICCAN : Right, we post links to all of our authors’ desert island fics in our show notes, so you might get some additional readership to that [cough] _Glee_ fic.

[laughter]

CUFFS : I hate admitting that, but, y’know, hey.

DARKWICCAN : Guilty pleasures, right? We all have our guilty pleasures.

CUFFS : Exactly.

DARKWICCAN : Well, Cuffs, thank you again so much for coming on, it has been an absolute pleasure chatting with you today.

CUFFS : Oh, thank you. This has been awesome, so, any time.

LARAGH : And it was great to meet and talk to you.

CUFFS : Great to meet and talk to you too, Laragh.

DARKWICCAN : And thank you, Laragh, for stepping into Delayne’s shoes for this segment, we really appreciate it.

LARAGH : Well, don’t worry regular viewers, she will be back soon, you have to deal with me again.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Except that you’re going to be on next week’s show too!

LARAGH : Except I’m going to be on next week’s show too, but apart from that.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Alright, well thanks everybody, you have a fantastic rest of the day.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for joining us.

Huge thanks to HaughtsCuffs for coming on and chatting with us about her story. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro, and big thanks and hugs to Laragh for stepping into Delayne's shoes for the last half of this episode.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Spring (Wild Horseradish Jam) by Eric Barone; A Cowboy Reborn by Bytheway-May; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast
> 
> We're also on iTunes!


	6. Take Your Time, We'll Wait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Multiple fic titles and authors?? Whaaaaat? We shake up the format and discuss our four favorite "slow Burn" fics! Then we sit down with author TruFreak89 to discuss her fake-dating AU fic "Little White Lies".

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://http://efapodcast.com/take-your-time-well-wait)

ORIGINAL AIR DATE: FEB 19, 2018

 

Read the fics!:

[Definitely Something](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12576580) by Stessa 

[From Afar](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7249528) by avrilsky 

[One-Eighty](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11340672) by Sensitive_Pigeon 

[Little White Lies](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7907002) by Trufreak89 

  
  


  
Trufreak89's Desert Island fic: Seven for a Secret by Tarius Maclay (Pretty Little Liars Fandom) (sadly, we could not find this story online)

  
TRANSCRIPT FOR THE DEAF AND HOH BY FLYING FANATIC

 

EFA EPISODE 06 – TAKE YOUR TIME

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid hosts DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction, I am your host DarkWiccan and with me is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we have someone else with us for this first segment!

DELAYNE : An extra co-host.

DARKWICCAN : We smuggled her in. [laughter] And I’m sure a lot of you listeners will remember her from last week. Laragh, welcome back to the show.

LARAGH : Thank you.

DARKWICCAN : You’re welcome. [laughter] And the reason why we have three of us for segment one this week is because we’re tackling a big, meaty topic, and that is slow burn fics. And the cool thing about slow burn fics is they’re really long. So it takes more than two of us to talk about them.

DELAYNE : Hopefully about more than half an hour [sic]. Or -

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, we like to challenge ourselves here on the podcast, and, so, we want to be able to give each fic that we want to talk about its due, but also not tarry too long, because we do have more than one fic to talk about today. Which is a slight shake up to the format that we’ve had so far.

But before we do that, couple things to touch on. First of all, we now know that folks are listening to the show.

DELAYNE : Right. How many downloads do we have so far?

DARKWICCAN : Over two hundred!

DELAYNE : Oh my gosh!

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, the show’s only been up for a couple of days, we have over two hundred downloads, I cannot believe it, thank you so much, everybody.

LARAGH : That’s so awesome.

DARKWICCAN : Y'know, quick touch back to episode one, this is our Sally Fields moment. [laughter] “You like us, you really like us!” So that’s super exciting, and amazing, and awesome. And we’re not going to waste too much time sitting here on our laurels because we have to make sure that we’re working - working for the praise.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Earn our keep.

DARKWICCAN : So, why don’t we start off by - so we’re talking about slow burn fics today. So, I think the first thing we kind of need to do is define what constitutes a slow burn fic. Delayne, the table is yours.

DELAYNE : So, what I’ve written down - what a slow burn is - is that it takes a little bit longer for the characters to get together in a fic. And there’s usually a few reasons for that - the - usually the - it’s an obstacle of some sort, like one of the characters is currently in a relationship, or, y'know, there’s a sort of a misunderstanding or dislike between the characters that they have to get past.

DARKWICCAN : There could also be distance involved.

DELAYNE : Yes, there have been a few actual physical distance. And then, in terms of timewise for the slow burn, not all of them exist, y'know, within, like, halfway through the fic, or towards the end of the fic, they finally get together. Some of them sort of happen, like, timewise, it happens sooner in the fic, chapter-wise, but the length of time within the fic itself, y'know, one chapter is two years later, so timewise it’s taking them a while to get together but to us it doesn’t seem as slow.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. But I think that for me, personally, when I’m reading what it typically tagged as a slow burn fic, I genuinely don’t expect to see any sort of forward momentum with the relationship build up, past just the, sort of, natural tension that’s building - I typically don’t expect to see the characters come together until, like you said, at the end, or usually at a mid-way mark, or pretty deep into the storytelling itself.

‘Cause that’s the fun of a slow burn fic, it’s that slow, y'know, heat to the boil, and it’s that tension that - that - sometimes it is angst, but that’s the - the _allure_ , I think. ‘Cause you know they’re going to get together in the end, so it’s not so much that. It’s -

DELAYNE : Right, that’s the whole point, that’s why we’re reading it,

DARKWICCAN : Right, exactly. Yeah. What do you think, Laragh?

LARAGH : Y'know, I was never really much for slow burn fics in the past, but upon your recommendations I have been reading them, and that - the angst can be, as you said, it can be fun to build that tension and get to that point. And kind of feel like you’ve earned it.

DARKWICCAN : Right, yeah, it’s sort of like, is when you’re dieting, right, and you’re putting off eating - eating a piece of chocolate cake, so you’re working really hard, y'know, with the diet and the exercise regime to reward yourself with the chocolate cake. And that’s kind of what it’s like when a slow burn fic is written really well, ‘cause it’s a little painful, makes you just tighten up a little bit.

DELAYNE : You feel deprived.

DARKWICCAN : Then you get the payoff, and it’s like, “Ugh, so good.” [laughter] So, we have four slow burn fics to discuss today, and each of these fics is incomplete; actively being updated on AO3. So they’re in various stages of relationship status. But the thing that they all have in common is they’re all written exceedingly well, otherwise we wouldn’t be chatting about ‘em. So, Delayne, why don’t you kick us off?

DELAYNE : So, for my first one, I have chosen Definitely Something by Stessa.

DARKWICCAN : Good choice.

DELAYNE : And what I was saying before, how we have, y'know, obstacles in this particular one it’s interesting because you first learn that Nicole is recently single, and you figure she’s going to be the obstacle to them getting together. She’ll be reluctant to be getting into a new relationship just after getting out of one. But that’s actually not the case.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s Waverly who is putting on the brakes, and - well we should mention that this is also a college AU, right?

DELAYNE : Yes.

LARAGH : Yes. Correct.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s a college AU, and Waverly’s sort of a - well not sort of, she is very much a [sic] activist.

DELAYNE : She’s adorable. [laughter] The way she’s written, I just... sorry.

DARKWICCAN : No, it’s okay, this is your pick, you get to talk about it! [laughter]

DELAYNE : I totally derailed there, sorry, give me a moment.

DARKWICCAN : While your train is boarding at the station... So, Laragh, is Definitely Something one that you’ve had a chance to read through?

LARAGH : I did read Definitely Something, yes. I really enjoyed it, I really enjoyed, as you guys were talking about, Waverly being an activist. Because I feel like if she’d gone to traditional college, she would have been an activist.

DARKWICCAN : I agree with you, she absolutely would have been an activist, because she’s so passionate about people being treated equally and fairly, that just seems to be a central - a core element to Waverly. And what better place to be able to express that, loudly and proudly, than at college.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I think it really does show Waverly as - I mean, she is very passionate about pretty much anything, so yeah, for her to start a club on campus and be super involved makes sense.

DARKWICCAN : Another thing that makes this Waverly really interesting is how opposed she is to relationships.

DELAYNE : Right? ‘Cause that’s another thing that sort of separates this from a lot of the other slow burns, is that they actually get together fairly quickly, but they’re not _together_ together.

DARKWICCAN : Right, yeah. We should mention this fic is rated Mature.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I believe that is correct.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. So, the fic is rated Mature, so with that comes certain expectations of certain elements being included. And so, when you have the slow burn thrown into the equation you typically aren’t expecting anything until well into the story, chapters in. That is not the case with this one. But like Delayne said, it’s not like they fall into each other’s arms, and instantly they become the Wayhaught that we all know.

LARAGH : I was just saying they just bang.

DARKWICCAN : They just bang! [laughter] And there’s nothing wrong with that, right? [laughter] I mean, it’s part - again, it’s kind of part of the college experience, Delayne excluded, it’s just part of that -

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Hey, that’s not very nice!

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : It’s nothing we haven’t talked about before.

DELAYNE : I feel called out.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Do you feel attacked? I’m sorry.

DELAYNE : Dammit.

DARKWICCAN : But _typically_ , it’s part of the - [laughter] it’s part of the experience, y'know. It’s sort of a free-wheeling time. For some folks. And -

DELAYNE : But, yeah, as of - I’m not sure when the last update was, but -

DARKWICCAN : Today.

DELAYNE : - yeah, they’re currently - was is it today?

DARKWICCAN : It was today.

LARAGH : I haven’t read today’s.

DELAYNE : Oh, I don’t think I’ve read the last. [laughter] Ohh, great. I’d say they’re currently not together but I could be wrong, by the time this airs, even.

DARKWICCAN : You’re wrong. [laughter]

DELAYNE : I’m okay with that too. It happens a lot.

DARKWICCAN : But - so we’ve got this really interesting thing, where Waverly is the one who is putting the brakes on and Nicole finds herself in this situation of being kind of this lovestruck puppy, sort of, following Waverly around. And getting increasingly - understandably - sort of confused and frustrated ‘cause Waverly is sending a whole bunch of mixed signals.

DELAYNE : Oh, yes. That part is written so well, I - it’s frustrating to read. [laughter] Damn it, Waverly, get your shit together.

DARKWICCAN : It hurts so good. I think that Stessa has captured that certain something that happens to, I think, a lot of - it happens - I mean, it happens in straight relationships too, but I think in lesbian relationships there’s this, sort of, like - especially when you have a friend - a large friend group, y'know, when you’re crushing on someone else there’s always that kind of, like, “Is she into me? I don’t know. Well she’s really nice, but like - I mean, I know she’s gay.”

DELAYNE : Right? At least that part isn’t - that is not part of the equation in this story. It’s kind of nice, we don’t have to worry about it.

DARKWICCAN : But I think that Stessa has done a really good job of capturing not only Nicole’s frustration and confusion - sorry, slight tangent; do you guys watch _The Good Place_?

LARAGH : Yes.

DELAYNE : Not as of yet.

LARAGH : Love it.

DARKWICCAN : So have you seen the most recent episode, Laragh?

LARAGH : No, you know that I binge-watch shows, unless you watch them.

DARKWICCAN : That’s true. That’s right, that’s right. Well, basically, this doesn’t spoil anything by saying that Michael, in the most recent episode, said that humans really only need two emotions: anger and confusion. [laughter] And I would say that Stessa filled that bill with Nicole here. She’s definitely angry and confused a lot of the time.

LARAGH : Poor Nicole.

DARKWICCAN : But then you’ve got Waverly, who is - I don’t know, let’s see if you gals agree with me - I think Waverly is equally as confused. She’s not angry, but she’s definitely confused. She doesn’t really know what she wants, and she’s sort of feeling her way around trying to figure it out.

DELAYNE : Yeah, but her - her emotions are sort of rooted in perhaps anger of her past, or other stuff, so I wouldn’t necessarily discount anger there.

LARAGH : Yeah, her think her walls are up, that’s kind of, I think, where her issues come from, she just is afraid to - afraid to care.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. And - and Nicole’s going to be the one to break those walls down.

[laughter]

LARAGH : Of course.

DELAYNE : Tag line, there you go, boom, got it.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Oh, man. So, I think that kind of - I think that - here’s the thing about slow burn fics, when they’re long like this, you can’t really cover them adequately, so each of these fics is going to be discussed and probably left - leaving you listeners with open ended questions. But you know what? That’s good. ‘Cause you should totally read these fics to get those questions answered.

DELAYNE : Right? Go and read it. Follow the links. We provide them.

DARKWICCAN : Yes! Read it.

LARAGH : Links [inaudible]

DARKWICCAN : Yes, links in the doubley-do. So speaking of long fics, my first pick - that I felt so kind of bad, when I asked Laragh to join us for this chat, because she had to read all of these fics to get up to speed, and Laragh, sorry, I’m going to sidetrack a little bit - Laragh doesn’t read incomplete works, typically. So -

DELAYNE : And I’ve sort of taken that stance when I started reading Wayhaught fics, was like, I’m going to shy away from incomplete stuff.

DARKWICCAN : Meanwhile, I literally read everything, because I have to keep on top of everything. [laughter]

DELAYNE : And that’s why you’re the host, and I am the co-host.

DARKWICCAN : But Laragh, thank you so much for diving in, especially on this fic, my first choice for this podcast was From Afar by avrilsky. And From Afar is not only unfinished, it currently has fifty chapters.

LARAGH : It’s over two hundred thousand words.

DARKWICCAN : It’s over two hundred and eighty thousand words, it is not short. It is an epic. And what I really like about it is it gives Nicole, in the build up to when she and Waverly ultimately get together - which again, we’re fifty chapters in, at this point, and I’m just going to say, they don’t make it together until somewhere in the middle, I’m not going to give away which chapter, but somewhere in the middle, is where.

DELAYNE : So, somewhere in the year twenty-five-ish.

DARKWICCAN : Somewhere near there, yeah. So we’ve got a tremendous, extensive slow burn to get them to that point, and we got quite a few things going on, but one of the things I really appreciate is that avrilsky doesn’t make Nicole a nun in the buildup, while she’s waiting.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Oh-ho!

DARKWICCAN : She does allow Nicole to go on dates, y'know, and be with other women. And I think that character development wise – and I know this is one thing where Laragh doesn’t like it, so Laragh I’ll turn it over to you in just a second – but I think character development wise, it’s really good, because I think that having someone just sitting and pining away is not as interesting. It gets a little boring, actually, compared to someone who is living their life the best that they can, as full as they can. Because first of all it’s more interesting as a reader, second of all I think it just gives them a more well-rounded, sort, of, character, more interesting character.

DELAYNE : And mental health wise, it’s not good to just sit away pining.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. Laragh?

LARAGH : I totally understand why someone would enjoy reading that. Personally, I don’t enjoy reading my ships with other people, so I kind of avoided that part.

But I think, like you say about the character development, I think it’s really amazing that, y'know, we have this medium of fanfiction that allows for you to take a character and have so many different ways to explore the character, whether it’s before they’re in the relationship, after, during. Y'know, there’s just all of this possibility and really with something like fanfiction, where there’s just so many different universes as well you can put this character in. It’s the only thing like it, there’s no other medium that allows us to do that.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that’s absolutely true. Good shout out to the fanfic authors, there.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : But, y'know, I do have to agree with you a bit, Laragh. I don’t – I will – like I said, I read everything. But I don’t necessarily enjoy fics where my ships are spilt up and dating other people. I – if they’re in a relationship prior to getting together, to me that’s like, oh, that’s backstory. That’s character history. That’s fine, y'know. ‘Cause I know that ultimately my ship is the endgame, and they’re going to end up together.

But – so avrilsky – so first of all we’ve got that, avrilsky puts Nicole with another person or persons, not spoil it. But, y'know, these persons are persons are female [sic]  prior to her getting together with Waverly. And also, she’s a – she’s a good cop. She writes Nicole as a good cop.

DELAYNE : And that is your favorite.

DARKWICCAN : That is my favorite. And not only is Nicole a good cop, she’s a good cop who also has a partner who she’s a good cop with, and who is also a good cop. So there’s lots of good cops in this and that’s really refreshing and nice, and I really enjoy the idea of Nicole having a partner in the field instead of – instead of going out solo.

But avrilsky really digs into Nicole’s backstory. There’s a point in the story where Nicole goes home, again, like many, many, many fics in this fandom where Wayhaught are the focus, it’s written from Nicole’s point of view. I’ve noticed this is very much a heavy – a heavy trend. We don’t see as many fics written from Waverly’s point of view.

DELAYNE : Now you mention it... oh my gosh, yeah. ‘Cause wait, the ones that I have started writing... yeah, yeah, all from Nicole’s.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, yeah. And so at one point Nicole goes home to deal with some family business and we get to see where she’s from and we get to meet her family and find out in this – in _this_ story why she’s a bit estranged from her family. And it’s all very interesting. And another thing about this story is that it is a – it kind of feels – it starts off as a sort of a behind and between the scenes fic, y'know, those fics where they fill in the blanks between scenes on the show.

So it’s also fun to see how avrilsky sort of builds up to the beginning – what would be the beginning of the series – and starts working in between the scenes, and then goes off in another direction, and then comes back. And where we’ve left off in the most recent update it’s season one, and it’s the episode where... it’s the episode where Wynonna and Dolls have to go to Judge Cryderman to get a warrant to search Bobo’s trailer, it’s the one where Waverly is taking the pictures from behind the tractor-trailer at the Revenant trailer park. I think it’s episode five.

So that’s where we are now, so yeah, we’re at chapter fifty, and we’ve just made it to episode five, so. Just to give you an idea of how much build up there is in this fic, to get that far. But yeah, so that’s From Afar, by avrilsky.

Okay, Delayne; what have you got?

DELAYNE : I have One-Eighty, by sensitive_pigeon.

DARKWICCAN : Yes!

LARAGH : Literally bouncing up and down on my seat.

DARKWICCAN : I am too!

DELAYNE : [laughter] I – just the premise is fantastic.

DARKWICCAN : Do tell.

DELAYNE : They are literally –

DARKWICCAN : Tell us about it, tell us about it!

DELAYNE : [laughter] They are literally stuck together on a planet far, far away.

DARKWICCAN : You can say that they’re on Mars.

DELAYNE : They are on Mars. I’m trying to be epic here, c’mon.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : I’m sorry! I mean Mars is technically thousands upon thousands of kilometers away, so it’s still pretty epic. But they’re not stuck there like Matt Damon. [laughter] They’re there on purpose.

DELAYNE : They’re part of a – is it – are they both NASA? No, one’s Canadian.

DARKWICCAN : Waverly’s Canadian.

DELAYNE : Yeah. So NASA and the CSA. We’ve got astronauts there taking care of the Mars station.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. But really – premise aside – sensitive_pigeon is a genius.

LARAGH : So funny.

DARKWICCAN : There is no way around it - yeah, she is hilarious – but she is absolutely a genius. She – her writing reminds me of, like, if Douglas Adams and Carl Hiaasen had a love child.

[laughter]

LARAGH : That’s a very good description.

DARKWICCAN : Laragh, how would you describe her writing?

LARAGH : It’s just – it’s just – what I really love is that she uses the language of the fandom, but she’s turned it into prose, and she’s made it work. Like, Nicole tells herself to stop being a useless lesbian. And at one point, shifting gear from gay to functioning. And I was just like...

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Delayne, what do you think about the social media element of the fic?

DELAYNE : I – that’s one of the things that I love about that, it’s – ‘cause it’s inter – y'know – it does, it makes it feel – the fans are included in the fic, I mean, it’s – how epic is that? It’s like the fourth wall of the comic book, c’mon, now.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s like the, y'know, I know Delayne, you’re not on Twitter as much as Laragh and I are.

DELAYNE : No.

DARKWICCAN : But you do hop in, and you do follow along, and it just reminded me these exchanges, these social media exchanges in this story just reminded me of like, the rifts and the waves that go on on Twitter, when people, like, start either live tweeting the show, or they just start chatting, going off on a tangent, and they start getting in arguments with each other, but everyone is speaking in shorthand, and in coded language.

DELAYNE : Or when Emily and Melanie start going off, and then all of us join in.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, exactly. It is just – it’s an absolute joy. And I love that she’s got a B-plot running through the social media exchanges.

DELAYNE : Yes. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Like I said, sensitive_pigeon is a genius.

LARAGH : My favorite thing about the Twitter stuff is one of the handles is called BotanyIsBest, and every time I read that I imagined it was Delayne.

DARKWICCAN : Yes! [laughter] Yes!

DELAYNE : [laughter] I – that – that warms my heart so much, guys. Because I do, what I randomly shout out, it tends to be like random botanical factoids.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, no, I love that B-plot between BotanyIsBest and Stetsonbot, it is so hilarious. And, like, y'know what, that could totally happen!

LARAGH : [inaudible]

DARKWICCAN : Say that one more time?

LARAGH : I said I bet it has, people trolling each other on Twitter becoming friends, or girlfriends, or partners, or whatever.

DELAYNE : That would be an epic love story.

DARKWICCAN : So, Laragh, what do you think of Commander Nicole Haught?

LARAGH : I love Commander Nicole Haught. I love that she looks out for Waverly, and I love that she – I love that she like, when she’s communicating with the other ships and stuff, especially Gardner, who’s Tucker Gardner. And she just like almost, always outmaneuvers them.

I love as well, and this is back to, kind of, sensitive_pigeon’s dialogue, I love the – at one point, when they’re cuddling, Nicole says, “You’re soft and smell like potatoes.” Which shouldn’t be romantic, but it is. It’s like one of the most romantic lines I’ve ever heard!

DARKWICCAN : Yes! It shouldn’t be romantic, but because they’re on Mars, where they shouldn’t be able to grow any sort of plant life, the fact the Waverly smells like home, really –

LARAGH : Yeah, I love that. I’m going to use that as a compliment, as well, just in my day-to-day life.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, that’s great.

LARAGH : “You’re soft and you smell like –“

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so should I make a comment about the fact that you’re in Ireland or not?

LARAGH : No you can, totally, yeah, for sure.

[cackling laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, no, I completely agree with you, I love how she is – I love how her character evolves. ‘Cause she starts off, kind of, like, “Woo-hoo, yay, I’m the commander of what is essentially janitor duty on Mars,” but slowly, as she starts to warm up more, despite the amount of – Waverly is really throwing up walls, in this story. And another situation where Waverly is absolutely throwing up walls in front of her. And both of them are, sort of, fighting their inner gay. [laughter]

But it is really neat to watch Nicole evolve from sort of, like – you know who she reminds me of? Have you guys seen the movie Real Genius?

LARAGH : I don’t think so.

DELAYNE : Nope.

DARKWICCAN : Ladies...

LARAGH : We’re useless. [laughter] We’re literally useless lesbians.

DARKWICCAN : Y-y-y'know what, Laragh I can forgive, Laragh I can forgive because she’s younger, and she’s in Ireland.

DELAYNE : I don’t even know what I’ve seen at this point. I don’t know what day it is. I have no idea what’s going on, generally, and it might be a while ‘til I get back to figuring that shit out, but now’s not the time.

DARKWICCAN : So, Real Genius is this amazing and fantastic movie from the 1980s –

LARAGH : Before my time.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I know, that’s why you’re forgiven. That’s why you’re forgiven for not knowing it, but that’s going to change.

DELAYNE : I’ll ask my wife, she’ll know.

DARKWICCAN : Okay. And it stars Val Kilmer, and he – basically it was about students at essentially Cal Poly, the polytechnical institute.

DELAYNE : Oh hey! I’m like thirty miles from there! [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah! So it’s – now, the school in the film is not called Cal Poly, but is referred to as a polytechnical institute, and essentially all of the students there are geniuses. But Val Kilmer plays this character who’s this sort of over it, irreverent, y'know, “I’m so smart I don’t need to try,” kind of character, but he’s still really sweet and kind and endearing, in spite of this. And so there’s a sort of arch of him going from “I don’t care anymore” to “Actually I care a whole lot.” And that is sort of – it’s sort of similar to Nicole’s arch in this.

Now, the interesting thing about One-Eighty is it’s only got what, Delayne, four chapters?

DELAYNE : Four chapters, but it has a ridiculous amount of words even in those four chapters. Fifty-five thousand, in four chapters.

DARKWICCAN : Fifty-five thousand words in four chapters, so, yeah, it’s – each chapter is – you can – it’s like a four-course meal, you can absolutely just dig into it.

LARAGH : It’s totally easy to read, as well.

DARKWICCAN : It is absolutely easy to read.

DELAYNE : Oh yeah, it goes so quick.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : And then you’re like, “I want more!”

DARKWICCAN : But again, speaking to sensitive_pigeon’s just ridiculously excellent writing ability, she shows, she doesn’t tell. She doesn’t have to go in and over-explain, or over-detail everything. ‘Cause there’s good detailing, like you get in the 80s Mixtape AU. But then there’s over detailing, where you’re just over-explaining something, and –

DELAYNE : That’s just me in general.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Or me, just on this podcast. [laughter] But this is something that pigeon avoids, and avoids very, very deftly and well, and you never feel like – even if she’s not laying everything out – like there are some times where I’ve been reading through the story, and I kind of go, “Wait a minute, what are they talking about?” And I do have to kind of go back and re-read it, and it’s not because it hasn’t been written well, it’s because I was reading too fast and I missed something. And I go, “Oh, now I know what’s going on, interesting, and no, they don’t need to talk about it.”

So let’s see, we’ve talked about Definitely Something by Stessa, From Afar by avrilsky, and One-Eighty by sensitive_pigeon. Which brings us to our fourth and final fic – yo, go alliteration, okay – for this slow burn fic episode which is Little White Lies, by Trufreak89. And this is my second choice for the show. This is, seriously, the best Fake Dating AU story I have ever read.

LARAGH : One hundred per cent agree with that.

DARKWICCAN : So basically what we’ve got is a situation, it’s a tropey kind of thing that is used a lot in fanfic, where Nicole is in need of an apartment and the only apartment available in town has a couples only statute in the lease that is enforced incredibly strongly by the landlady. So Nicole is basically preparing herself to have to move into the local roach motel when Waverly steps up and volunteers to pretend to be her girlfriend. And that’s the premise for the story.

And, like I said, it’s tropey, it’s something that’s used often, I’ve seen it used in other fandoms frequently, and I’m sure that Delayne and Laragh can concur there.

I’ve seen it used in this fandom once or twice, but the thing that sets this story apart, the thing that sets Little White Lies apart, is it’s so well written and conceived, and it is so much fun to watch these two slowly work towards each other, while pretending to – slowly work towards a real relationship while pretending to be in a relationship, it’s – it’s a lot of fun to watch.

Laragh, What do you think?

LARAGH : What I really liked about this one was how they used, kind of, the oddness of Purgatory to sell the fact that she had to be in a couple to rent the room. And then also that the landlady is related to everybody. [laughter] So it’s this odd small town –

DELAYNE : Which is true for small towns.

LARAGH : Yeah, exactly. So it’s this really odd, small town that’s, like, enforcing this unique situation that probably wouldn’t really happen in real life. But I totally believed it because it’s Purgatory.

DELAYNE : That [31:46] could be considered discrimination, but it’s okay.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I love the nepotism, and the fact that what was her name: Mrs Thompson? Is related to, like, the entire town.

One thing that I really liked is the fact that you’ve got a situation where at first Waverly’s just like, “I’ll just say I’m your girlfriend, I’ll just say that I’m moving in with you, and that should be enough.” But of course, that’s not enough, because the landlady, Mrs Thompson, is very, very meddling and very much in her tenants’ business. So when she notices that Waverly hasn’t been around in the week or so that Nicole has been living at the apartment, then the stakes get raised, because now Waverly _has_ to move in.

So, Laragh, what about for you, what about this story makes it, y'know, sort of the gold standard for Fake Dating AU stories?

LARAGH : I think for me the biggest bit is that I believe the progression of their feelings. Y'know, I believe that – I believe – ‘cause they’re coming at it from kind of different places, ‘cause again, this is a fake where Nicole starts with feelings and Waverly doesn’t necessarily, and they kind of have to go on their own paths to meet. And I just, I felt it true as I read it, I didn’t stop and think, okay, they’re going too fast, they’re not going fast enough, it just kind of worked.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. I like how Trufreak set it up that as Waverly – ‘cause Waverly is the one who decides to initiate public displays of affection with Nicole, and totally catches Nicole off-guard. But again, Waverly is sort of leaning on the whole, “Well we’re just pretending” excuse. “But we’ve got to sell it, right?” y'know.

DELAYNE : Right, it’s not believable if  you’re just, “Oh they’re just friends.”

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I like how she used that, sort of, idea of Waverly using the whole, “Well, we’re just pretending but we’ve got to sell it to everybody,” excuse to sort of work through her own feelings and attractions for Nicole. And also, in a way, she also sort of, would you say, Laragh, she kind of also got her own way a bit?

LARAGH : I think – yeah, again, like  you were saying, she tries to talk herself out of her feelings, and she just, kind of – she’s kind of, it’s just kind of the definition of quiet gay panic, isn’t it? She’s just in her head, denying it, “It’s just not happening, we’re just friends,” isn’t it? You tell yourself that over, and over, and over again, you’ll start to believe it.

DARKWICCAN : Or the feelings just become so strong that you just can’t even lie to yourself anymore. So we have talked about four slow burn fics today, each of them relatively long, and each of them is incomplete.

So you might be wondering, well, are we going to talk to four authors for our second segment today? And the answer is: no. That’s way too much.

Because we really like to dig in with our authors, and really be able to have a good discussion with them. So, we chatted about it and decided that we were going to talk to Trufreak89, the author of the last story we just talked about, Little White Lies. So we’re very excited to have her on the show for the second segment.

But before we get to that, of course, as  you know, we must introduce our [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Threatin' Zeppelin, by Cuphead

DARKWICCAN : Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the _Earp Fiction Addiction,_ the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, Darkwiccan, and with me is my guest co-host: Laragh.

LARAGH : Hi, again.

DARKWICCAN : And we, as we mentioned before the break, we are excited to have author Trufreak89 joining us today, but she’s going to be going by Tania for the interview. Tania, welcome to the show.

TANIA : Thank you very much.

DARKWICCAN : Thank you so much for coming on, we’re really, really excited to talk to you. So, Okay, I’m going to ask you the question that we ask – we start off with moth of our authors, which is how did you get into writing fanfiction?

TANIA : I started about fourteen years ago, which makes me sound really old. Just got into creative writing when I was a teenager, and kind of never got out of it.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, fantastic. Have you written for other fandoms?

TANIA : Yeah, I’ve written for loads of things, for twenty or thirty fandoms. Not so much on AO3, but I’ve got more of my older work on fanfiction dot net.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, fantastic. Right on. So what drew you into writing for Wayhaught?

TANIA : I think I just really enjoyed the series, and anything with sort of, like, female interaction, not just sort of the Wayhaught scenes, also with like Waverly, and the sisters.

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah, yeah. The Earp sisters relationship is really, I think probably the chore relationship of the show.

TANIA : Yeah, definitely.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely. But let’s sidle over to the fic we’re here to talk about: Little White Lies. Which I think, rightfully so, has been called the best Fake Dating AU in the Wayhaught fic fandom.

TANIA : Not bad for a first attempt.

DARKWICCAN : No, not bad at all. [laughter] So, obviously, with the premise of the Fake Dating, you have this wonderful tension that you’ve built between Waverly and Nicole, where they’re both sort of struggling with their own internal feelings for each other. And I just, I wonder if, were there moments when, like Waverly and Nicole themselves, you just wanted to give in, and let them admit their feelings to each other? Even if it might have been a little too early, storyline-wise?

TANIA : Yeah, there was probably a few times in the story, particularly when they’re first at Shorty’s, and they spend the night in Waverly’s old apartment after the business with Champ in the bar.

And also, kind of, when the cashier in the supermarket flirting with Waverly, it started sort of to go to the point where they might admit their feelings but I thought it was a bit too early in the story. I’ve got a general idea of where it’s going so I didn’t want to do it too early on.

DARKWICCAN : So you’re always kind of fighting against the Waverly and Nicole, sort of, trying to beat you to the punch?

TANIA : Yeah, they just want to get together, just ignore me.

[laughter]

LARAGH : So, what I wanted to know is how did you decided on the premise for the Fake Dating would be? Because there’s really just so many options in that world, but this one is really good and it’s really believable, it’s really solid.

TANIA : Yeah, I’ve read a lot of them where it’s generally, sort of, for like family functions, or school reunions, and I just didn’t think it would really work for Wayhaught. Whereas with Nicole being new to this town, and obviously we’ve come to realise she has her own house, and everyone thought it was a little apartment, so I thought it was a good direction to go in.

Plus it meant if they were living together they could have awkward bed sharing, which is another favourite trope of mine.

LARAGH : I think it’s a favourite trope of everyone.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Yes, I can agree. Awkward bed sharing is always enjoyable. [laughter] So, you’ve written this scenario where they have to live together, which I just – we were chatting about this before the break – how hilarious it is that Mrs T – you have Mrs Thompson related to everybody in the town. [laughter] Which I think just quantifies how small Purgatory is.

But, so you have this situation where they have to pretend to be dating, now they have to be living with each other, and of course Purgatory being the small town that it is, they’re going to be seen together in public a lot. Which means that they have to play up the act in public. So I think it’s really interesting how you’re Waverly is fairly bold with the public displays of affection when she’s, you know, quote unquote, “pretending” to be Nicole girlfriend.

Do you think she would have been as brazen if the conceit of a fake relationship wasn’t in play?

TANIA : No, I don’t think so. I think Waverly tends to be braver and more confident when it’s for someone else’s benefit. If she’s doing something for, say, Wynonna or for Nicole, I think, basically, she’s just kind of, like, selling it, and being as affectionate to make sure people are buying it and that Nicole didn’t get in trouble.

I think she’ll probably be more awkward in public now that they’re actually dating. She’s been watched and judged her whole life in Purgatory as an Earp, and I think that’s going to come into it later on in the story.

LARAGH : Really [inaudible]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, that’s interesting. So – yeah, that is absolutely brilliant. Well said, Laragh. Yeah, that’s something I hadn’t even thought about, the fact that when she’s – she’s more bold when she’s faking it than when it’s reality.

TANIA : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Very clever.

LARAGH : Another clever thing, that I thought was the relationship that Waverly had with Nicole’s cat. Who’s Flora, I believe, in this fic. And, kind of, she called her her arch nemesis at one stage, but as Waverly grows into accepting her feelings for Nicole, her relationship with the cat also improves. And I was wondering, was that an intentional parallel that you were trying to make?

TANIA : A little bit. At first it was more just for the comedy value of it, ‘cause every fic I read, like, the cat always loves Waverly. And I thought it’d kind of mix it up a little bit if the cat didn’t like her. You know she’s now living in Nicole’s space, with Nicole’s cat, and she’s kind of having to put up with this cat that hates her on top of everything else.

But I think as it’s gone on and she’s kind of become more comfortable living in Nicole’s space and with her own feelings, her and the cat have kind of warmed up to each other a bit.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Yeah that is something I really did enjoy, actually, is the adversarial nature of their relationship. I love how Flora just has no time for putting up with this – this strange human in her – taking up space in her bed, next to her human, yeah, yeah. I just – that’s really –

TANIA : [inaudible] she feeds her.

DARKWICCAN : Exactly. [laughter] So, as kind of Laragh was talking about, as  - and you just now, Tania – as Waverly has gotten more comfortable and more in tune with her own feelings regarding Nicole it almost makes you wonder did Waverly have any inkling of her feeling for Nicole prior to their arrangement, or was her decision to offer herself as a fake girlfriend driven by a need to be helpful, or a deeper attraction to Nicole that she hadn’t come to terms with yet?

TANIA : I think it was a bit of both, really. I mean, from the very first meeting on the show you can tell there’s tension and there’s something there between them. This story kind of tries to follow canon, so much as it kind of starts around the time that she’s just dumped Champ, she’s quite friendly with Nicole, they’ve had a lot of interaction, and there’s something there.

But I think it’s also, it’s Waverly, she’s the nicest person in Purgatory, so has offered to help just to help out her friend. Then, obviously, as things go along she starts to kind of think about these feelings more and, sort of, have ideas about acting on them.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, definitely. And I think you’re absolutely right, you pulled the characterisation beautifully from the show, in that there was always that sort of underlying vibage happening.

LARAGH : So, Little White Lies was part of Wayhaught Week, Day One, I believe, which was the Fake Dating AU prompt. So did you have the idea prior to learning about Wayhaught Week, or was it prompted entirely by it?

TANIA : It prompted pretty much by Wayhaught week. Like I said, I’d read a lot of Fake Dating fics myself but I’d never really written one before, and when the idea for the Wayhaught week came up with, like, the tropes and the Fake Dating I just thought it would be a good chance to give it a try and see if I could pull one off.

DARKWICCAN : And you did! [laughter]

LARAGH : I was about to say the exact same thing, you definitely did.

TANIA : Thanks.

DARKWICCAN : So one thing I find really interesting in this AU of yours is Wynonna doesn’t seem as oblivious as she is on the series, and it almost feels like she is pushing Waverly to recognise that there’s more going on here than just Waverly being a good pal, and helping a buddy out.

So I have to ask, was this change to Wynonna’s character – and really, it’s not really a change, too much, it’s more just a shift in perspective – was this brought about by necessity within the fic itself, or is it you feel like maybe Wynonna see more that she lets on?

TANIA : Yeah, I kind of feel like – I know there’s the general consensus that Wynonna’s oblivious and the long running joke that she doesn’t get it, but I think she is quite perceptive as a person. She’s been on her own for a long time, she’s quite good at reading people, especially when it comes to her little sister. They’ve had a lot of time away from each other, but she’s come back to Purgatory and she still knows her sister, I think she knows that Nicole’s good for Waverly.

Like, in the Sherriff’s office when they’re talking and she’s like, “Oh, you’re a walking bumper sticker [...] You should hang out with Waverly more.” [sic] It’s kind of playing on that, and just kind of elaborating it a little bit more.

LARAGH : I think Wynonna’s actually really well written in this fic. Actually, my favourite line of the entire fic is a Wynonna line, where she says, “You look like someone run over your puppy – wait did someone run over Haught?” [laughter] That is so Wynonna! And so just, like, perfect of the Wynaught BroTP and stuff as well.

TANIA : Yeah, I love writing characters for that, they’re sort of witty and sort of generally – I’m trying to think of the word – not sort of socially accepted kind of thing, they rely on their sarcasm and their wit a bit more.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, Wynonna definitely – gosh, yeah, now I’m thinking of - trying to search for the word. She – well she doesn’t really care too much, or at least on the outside she doesn’t let on that she cares too much what other people think, and as a result she’s a lot more willing to just say it like it is, tell it like it is, in a moment’s notice.

LARAGH : At the beginning of the fic, when Waverly first moves in, Wynonna and her talk about the curse and the general supernatural happenings in Purgatory, hat Nicole doesn’t know yet, and do you plan to, kind of, maybe give us a spoiler here and – do you think that will be expanded upon, now the Nicole and Waverly are getting together, or...?

TANIA : Yeah, it is going to come into play in the next couple of chapters. It’s sort of hinted at towards the end of the one I’m writing now - which is taking me forever to update – but Haught’s going to find out about the other side of the Earps, and there is going to be some involvement like, that Waverly’s not living on the Earp homestead, and she’s not protected.

DARKWICCAN : Oh! That’s right. That was a big story point that you made in the first couple of chapters there.

TANIA : Yeah, kind of links back that she’s not on the family land, so she’s not protected from the Revenants, and they might start to notice after a while.

DARKWICCAN : Aha! Well, good groundwork there.

TANIA : Thanks.

DARKWICCAN : I honestly almost completely forgot about that element.

TANIA : Yeah, I think it’s ‘cause I’ve kind of ignored the Revenants for a little while, but towards the later part of the story they are going to come in a bit more.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, very cool. Now I’m like, okay, so when are you updating? No, actually. [laughter] We never, ever, ever pressure authors to update, because all of us hosts here on this show are also fanfic authors and we know how difficult it can be to get the work out. So – but I’m very excited for whenever you do get to it, that’s going to be really, really exciting and fun to read.

TANIA : Hopefully it should be in the next few days, if I can get this chapter finished off and edited.

LARAGH : I was just thinking that, I’m looking forward to it.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, me too. Do we have any more shenanigans with Mrs Thompson on the horizon?

TANIA : Possibly, I mean she is quite a fun character to write, she brings in, sort of, the comedy value of it. Obviously, it’s kind of a bit more drama at the moment that’s been into it, so for comic relief it’s either Mrs Thompson or the cat, usually comes into play.

DARKWICCAN : Is Mrs Thompson based any meddling landladies that you’ve known?

TANIA : No, not really. It’s think it’s just, sort of, general old lady interfering character. [laughter] I haven’t had any landlords like that.

LARAGH : Okay, so I was curious about your process of bringing Meagan in, into the fray. Because she kind of almost played a Shae-like role in that she brought them together, you know, she wasn’t the villain as often the ex is portrayed as.

TANIA : Yeah, I think, generally, I can’t really see Haught being with someone that is a villain, that would kind of be like that, if you know what I mean, like I don’t really see her as an adversary, just as kind of plot point to get Waverly to open up – to admit her feelings.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I agree with you there. I don’t see that – just the character that we’ve seen developed on the show, of Nicole Haught, I don’t think that she would ever have bene with someone manipulative or adversarial, because Nicole is very, very good at reading people and also she ain’t got time for that crap. Do you have any favourite moments in this story that you’ve written so far? Ones where you finished writing them and sat back and went, “Oh yeah. That’s a good one.”

TANIA : Possibly when they’re in the supermarket and the cashier’s hitting on Waverly, and she’s so oblivious. And obviously Nicole gets a bit jealous, but it kind of goes over Waverly’s head. I quite enjoyed writing that. And generally, like, some of the comedy aspects, like with Wynonna and her one-liners, and the adversarial thing between the cat and Waverly.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Yeah, I did enjoy the supermarket scene myself, I thought that was pretty funny. The cashier’s just blatantly hitting on her [laughter] and Nicole’s hackles sort of go up.

LARAGH : What I really loved about it was that I got to have domestic Wayhaught, even though they weren’t officially together. That’s like heaven to me.

DARKWICCAN : Domestic Wayhaught is your jam?

LARAGH : Oh, yeah! For sure. Domestic Wayhaught is my jam.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] That’s okay, we know that, thought. And we’ll explore that on a future episode.

LARAGH : Yeah, I think you wrote them really well as being domestic. Even though they weren’t together they still had that vibe that they were comfortable with each other.

TANIA : Yeah, I think I’ve quite enjoyed writing that, sort of, them living together but not actually being in a relationship, and how they’re navigating that, and sort of being in each other’s space and not quite sure what to do about it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s - I liked how you set it up where initially they weren’t sleeping in the same – they hadn’t gotten to the awkward bed sharing yet – and I liked how you had them alternating between couch and sofa depending on who had what work shift the next day. And that sort of ballet, almost, that choreographed dance around each other until finally they just end up sleeping in the same bed together.

LARAGH : Yeah, so you touch on it before, but I thought it was really important that Nicole didn’t compromise on her morals, or on consent. Did you make an active choice that Waverly would always be the one to initiate, or did it just happen like that because that’s who the characters are?

TANIA : Yeah, I think some of it’s just kind of natural, the way you’re writing it, but I think Nicole’s quite a sort of moralistic character and I don’t think she’s do anything if she was unsure of what Waverly felt, or if she was drunk, or anything like that. So, just kind of the way it worked out was that it was Waverly that was taking the first steps.

DARKWICCAN : And, again, true to form, true to form. One thing that we talk  about a lot on this show is how much we love it when authors really key into the characters compasses - central compasses within themselves – and stick to that, and don’t try to paint personalities onto them that don’t fit who they are. So, yeah, absolutely, letting Waverly set the pace is – it’s canon, actually. I think even Emily has said  - what was it Emily has said – that Nicole lets Waverly drive the sex train, or something. The sexy bus. She lets – [laughter] she lets Waverly drive the sexy bus. [laughter]

In this universe you’ve created, how do you feel Nedley feels about Nicole? Is he more protective of Nicole in a father-like way, or is more protective of Waverly and really views Nicole through a more official work-related lens?

TANIA : I think, again, it’s sort of a bit of both. I mean, he’s known Waverly since she was a young girl, her father used to be part of the Sherriff’s department. I think he does kind of take on a fatherly role and looks after Waverly, so he’s kind of like, threatening Nicole. Not to hurt her, but at the same time Nicole’s the person he’s choosing to take over as Sherriff, he’s sort of grooming her to be his replacement.

So I think it’s a bit of both, that he has feelings for both of them, but I think the strongest one would probably be the urge and the need to protect Waverly, because he’s known her since she was a little girl, kind of thing.

DARKWICCAN : Do you think Nedley was surprised when suddenly Waverly, whom he’s always known to essentially be straight, is apparently dating his newest rookie?

TANIA : I think he probably sees right through it and knows, at first, what they’re doing. But he’s not going to say anything, kind of – obviously it’s his aunt, and stuff, and he could step in and say, “They’re faking it.” But I think, like him, like the rest of the town are quite happy to see it happen. So, he’s generally just sort of stepping back and letting it happen, but he’s not making it easier on either of them.

DARKWICCAN : I love the idea of the entire town rooting for Waverly and Nicole to get together. [laughter] That’s so great.

LARAGH : So they – for the last chapter we’ve all read here, they just had their first kiss, their first _real_ kiss. So, it kind of mirrored the show in that Waverly, you know, attacked Nicole with her face again, kind of went for it. Did you intentionally want it to be similar, or, again, is it just these characters who are kind of dictating?

TANIA : Waverly just throws herself at her. Generally, I think it was intended to mirror the show. I think it was, in my eye, the only way it could happen, again, like with Waverly taking over. ‘Cause I don’t think Nicole would have made the first move, I think she would have waited for Waverly to, kind of, just naturally sort of happen, similar to the way it did in the show.

DARKWICCAN : Nice, and excellent use of the call-back to the show, there.

TANIA : I quite like using what’s there in canon so it’s not too out there, and it’s quite similar, sort of quite – mirroring what’s already happened in the show so it still feels familiar, with it even being something new.

LARAGH : Well, I think that’s what makes it so believable, this story, is that you know we fully believe that these characters would act this way because they’ve acted a very similar way.

TANIA : Yeah. Obviously, especially when it comes to tropes, sometimes it can come across as a little bit out of character, so I think if you stay as close to the characters as you can, and true to the show, it does help it come across as more realistic.

LARAGH : That is top shelf writer advice, right there. To any writers listening; that is excellent advice, yes.

DARKWICCAN : I concur completely, yeah. And that actually, I have to say that inspired another question in me. If you were to sort of parallel the storyline of Little White Lies with the storyline of the television show – if that’s even possible – what episode do think we’d sort of be on, or near?

TANIA : Possibly towards the end of season one, where Nicole’s just sort of about to find out about the Revenants, and, like, she’s knows something’s going on even in the story, I’ve referenced it, that she’s still question that something’s going on. But she’s kind of took a step back and let things happen, but she’s still quite an observant person. And like I say, with Waverly living off the homestead, the Revenants are going to take advantage of that, and it’s going to bring it into the fore where Nicole’s going to find out about them through events that happen in the next few chapters.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, I’m excited! It’s going to be so cool! [laughter] Well, Tania, thank you so much for coming on, and you’ve been a dear letting us sort of grind at you for almost half an hour. So we’re going to let you go, but before we do we’ve got more question that we ask all of our authors. And that is: if you’re stranded on a desert island and can have only one fanfic to read, what is it?

TANIA : Is it from any fandom, or just from _Wynonna Earp_?

DARKWICCAN : It can be from any fandom.

TANIA : Any fandom would probably be... It’s by an author called Terias Mcklay, it’s Seven For a Secret, it’s a Pretty Little Liars fic. And it’s about a hundred and seventy-odd thousand words, so it’d probably keep you busy on a desert island for a while.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] So not only is it an excellent fic, and one of your favourites, it’s also long, so it would keep you occupied.

TANIA : Yeah. At least until a boat goes by.

DARKWICCAN :[laughter] Okay, well fantastic. We’ll be sure to include a link to that – is it available on AO3, or is it on Fanfic?

TANIA : Not quite sure, I think it might be on Fanfic. I’m not sure if the author transferred over or not.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, well we will hunt it down, and we’ll be sure to provide a link in our show notes so that other folks can go and check out your desert island fic there.

TANIA : Yep.

DARKWICCAN : Well, Tania, thank you so much for coming on, we really appreciate it, it has been an absolute blast chatting with you today.

LARAGH : It was great to talk to you Tania.

TANIA : Thanks very much for having us on.

DARKWICCAN : Alrighty, ladies, you have a fantastic evening over there in the British Isles.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks to Tania, aka TruFreak89, for coming on and talking with us about her story: Little White Lies. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro and Big thanks and hugs to Laragh for joining us for both segments of today's episode.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Elder Kettle; Threatin' Zeppelin; and Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast
> 
> We're also on iTunes!


	7. Who You Gonna Call?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get a little spooky on the podcast this week as we discuss the Monsterology Series by Half.
> 
> We chat with Half about their work and get the low-down on the truth behind the ghost stories!

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/who-you-gonna-call)

ORIGINAL AIR DATE: FEB 26, 2018

 

Read the fics!:

[Monsterology](http://archiveofourown.org/series/844989) by Half 

 

Half's Character Ringtones:

Nicole's for Waverly: [Snapback](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLQATzCyxfE) by Old Dominion 

Waverly's for Wynonna: [Brother](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6TXPNybrmk) by Kodaline 

Nicole and Wynonna for each other: [The Kids Aren't Alright](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR7U7_cKJw4) by Fall Out Boy 

Wynonna's for Waverly: [Little Lion Man](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd8tOAJMA8Q) by Mumford and Sons 

 

You can purchase Half's original fiction under her pen-name Alex Kost here: [Alex Kost on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Alex-Kost/e/B01B8C1GLK/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1519667950&sr=1-1)

  
Half's Desert Island fic: [Open Range Hearts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7353505) by HaughtsCuffs 

 

TRANSCRIPT FOR THE DEAF AND HOH BY FLYING FANATIC

 

EFA EPISODE 07 – WHO YOU GONNA CALL

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody and welcome to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host DarkWiccan and with me is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And she’s back! [laughter] And I’m so happy! You were only gone for half an episode, but I’m – [laughter]

DELAYNE : Right, well, two halves of episodes. I missed two halves.

DARKWICCAN : Two back halves, yeah. So one whole episode. [laughter]

DELAYNE : I have a desk, I have a computer at the desk and the microphone out, I don’t have to like put it up and put it away for the time being, so I’m excited about that part.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, settled in to the new temporary digs.

DELAYNE : Right. And still need to find more permanent one, but…

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. But that’s not as important as what’s happening right now, which is this podcast! [laughter]

DELAYNE : No, the people come here just to listen to our banter about our personal lives. They don’t care about the fanfiction, that’s not why they’re here.

DARKWICCAN : Well, just in case they do - [laughter] just in case they do care about the fanfiction, maybe we should tell everybody what are topic is this week.

DELAYNE : Is that me?

DARKWICCAN : That’s you, yeah.

DELAYNE : You give me such a great lead-in and I still pause and, like, “Wait, oh you actually want me to talk?”

DARKWICCAN : That’s what editing is for, my friend. We’re going to make it sound like you immediately were on it. [laughter]

DELAYNE : We’re talking about the Monsterology series by Half.

DARKWICCAN : Yes! The Monsterology series, which is a College AU.

DELAYNE : And also a Coffee Shop AU.

DARKWICCAN : It is. Wow, Half was covering her bases on this one, wasn’t she? She’s got the Coffee Shop AU going, she’s got the College AU going, she’s got sort of a _Ghostbusters_ -y, _Ghost Hunters_ -y thing going on…

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : Nice job, Half. Good job there, covering all those different tropes.

DELAYNE : Well, it’s in the tags, basically a Ghost AU, in a Coffee Shop AU, in a College AU. So all the AUs for the price of one.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yeah. What else could she have thrown in there just to be cheeky?

DELAYNE : A Pokémon AU. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : She did! She threw in a Pokémon AU! This really does – it covers so much ground, oh my gosh, that’s hilarious. Oh, man. So, basically the premise of the Monsterology series – it’s in two parts.

So, the first part is Cryptozoology and that is the College/Coffee Shop/Pokémon/ _Ghost Hunter_ AU. [laughter] So we’re going to talk about that one first. And so, Cryptozoology, the premise is you’ve got basically all the members of the main cast of _Wynonna Earp_ in college together. Wynonna, and Doc, and Dolls are all seniors, Nicole is a Junior, and Waverly is a Freshman. Right?

DELAYNE : Uh…

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, that’s right because –

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - at one point – yes- one point Wynonna says something about Nicole’s here for another year, and Waverly’s here for three more, so we have to do something about this issue now.

DELAYNE :[laughter] And it does say that Waverly is – it starts out where she’s seventeen, so we get to celebrate her eighteenth birthday at college.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. And Nicole gets to have a gay panic attack. [laughter] So, okay. So, yeah. So they’re all college students, they’re at this college, the Ghost River University, and there are strange a-happenings on campus that can’t be explained easily.

DELAYNE : Creepy symbols.

DARKWICCAN : Creepy symbols, weird music playing, props in the theater department moving themselves around, things like that. And, so the group, after a series of events, basically decides to become ghost hunters. And they try to solve the mystery of what is causing all this paranormal activity. So that’s essentially the premise of the first fic.

DELAYNE : What an excellent summary.

DARKWICCAN : Why thank you so much. Not bad for just coming up with it on the spot, eh? So, what stood out to you the most about this first piece, Delayne?

DELAYNE : Well, I had a epiphany and I figured out –

DARKWICCAN : Did it hurt? [laughter]

DELAYNE : Okay, so, I had an epiphany about why Coffee Shop AUs are popular. Because, in canon, you have Nicole ordering a cappuccino as the first scene, and y'know, that moment –

DARKWICCAN : That’s right!

DELAYNE : - when you feel kind of dumb, like, “Duh! How obvious is that?”

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I feel very dumb right now.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Glad it wasn’t me then, just me. I’m not alone. So that was the first, sort of, epiphany that I had. And then another thing that’s sort of different is that, I mean, Waverly is like instantly attracted to Nicole, and it is very clearly stated, bam, instantly drawn what’s going on here. So that was interesting.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, she was immediately attracted to Nicole, she couldn’t figure out why, because she hadn’t figured herself out yet.

DELAYNE : Just the fact that it was stated so clearly, I guess, is what makes it, sort of, different.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. One thing that I really liked is the – how Half took Nicole and, of course, made her a criminology major. But then had this conceit of criminology majors being able to intern with the campus police department, so that she could have Nicole Haught in some form of uniform, and doing patrols on campus.

DELAYNE : Right? It’s genius, the College Shop AU, but it’s still Nicole Haught is a cop.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and I also like that, as you know, Nicole being a competent, good cop is my jam and, even though Nicole is very much a younger Nicole, she is not as mature as the character on the show, she does still take her internship with the department very, very seriously.

She also does stupid, young, twenty-something things of taking it seriously while at the same time playing Pokémon on her phone while she’s on patrol…

DELAYNE : [laughter] And also refusing to wear her uniform properly.

DARKWICCAN : Yes! Yeah, she will just - is incapable of buttoning those top few buttons, and I guess that’s going to follow her into her professional career.

DELAYNE : It’s uncomfortable! The top buttons just – it’s uncomfortable. I can’t do it, myself.

DARKWICCAN : Just choking you, yeah. Well there’s a reason why I wear t-shirts.

DELAYNE : And there’s a reason why I wear collared shirts with the top button undone.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. But anyway –

DELAYNE : [laughter] So we’re talking about Nicole being a cop, and a good cop, right?

DARKWICCAN : And of course her – the head of the campus police department is Randy Nedley.

DELAYNE : It’s awesome.

DARKWICCAN : Which is great, yeah. And he is just as much a mentor and a father figure to Nicole here, as he is on the show. And his daughter, Chrissy Nedley, is also a freshman at GRU and is Waverly’s roommate. So, nice little way to bring in that character as well.

DELAYNE : Yes, I – there’s been so many good fics with Chrissy as a really good side character and this is one of them.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, Chrissy Nedley has quickly become one of my favorite characters that really only exists in fanfiction. I mean, we got our introduction to her, y'know, in Season One, in two episodes of Season One, but really she’s always just – she was more of a plot device to kind of keep things moving forward on the show. I love the fact that so many fic authors have picked up on her friendship with – her canon friendship with Waverly and really expanded on it and made these really well-rounded, interesting version of her that we can really dig into.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So, see, what – okay. What did you think of Doc being a theater major? And being a method actor, who for some reason always wants to be a cowboy?

DELAYNE : [laughter] Right? I did actually make that note about Doc being a method actor, ‘cause that is hilarious. How else would you bring about that character and what it embodies in that time period, without him being an immortal dude?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, how else do you justify this guy walking around, y'know, in 2016 –

DELAYNE : “I am a method actor!”

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] I love it! At one point he says, “I have positioned myself as the hero of this piece.” [laughter] And Dolls is just like, “What in the – no you’re not.” [laughter] Yeah. So I found that really, really enjoyable. What else have you got in your notes?

DELAYNE : Ah, here we go. Back to the cappuccino that Nicole orders.

DARKWICCAN : You are really attached to that concept.

DELAYNE : Just let me get there, gosh darn it! [laughter] So, Nicole orders the cappuccino, but because she was spaced out, that was not actually what she drinks, or likes, and what’s amusing to me is that this was before the pickle incident in canon.

DARKWICCAN : Oh!

DELAYNE : So, so, it’s apparently very in-character for Nicole to just accept what Waverly gives her, even if it’s not something she likes.

DARKWICCAN : That’s right, yeah, she placed the order for the cap – well, now, she was completely, just, out of her brain. She was having a very, “Holy crap, I’m gay” moment there, right, ‘cause she saw Waverly and it was just like –

DELAYNE : “Uh, uh, uh – cappuccino, that’s the only word I can think of right now!”

DARKWICCAN : Right, right. And that’s not even what she wanted, and then every time she goes back into the café, Waverly just serves her cappuccino.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Right? ‘Cause that’s what she asked for the first time.

DARKWICCAN : Exactly, yeah. So, yeah, you’re absolutely right, that is – Half must have had a clairvoyant moment there where she just read Nicole’s beads so well.

DELAYNE : There was another one, which of course I didn’t write it down and now I can’t think of it, it happens again, towards the end of the fic, where something is, like, wait a minute, that’s a season two thing. This was written before season two. But I don’t know what it is. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, maybe as we keep talk – as we continue to talk about the stories it’ll come back to you.

DELAYNE : Maybe.

DARKWICCAN : So, one thing you were telling me before we started recording, Delayne, was that you really like the dialogue in this piece.

DELAYNE : Absolutely. When Nicole made the top-shelf ass comment. [laughter] I mean, I was hooked before that, but, y'know, that was the epitome, that was the best shout-out - they really – the back and forth is fantastic between them. Actually all of the characters and Nicole is sarcastic, and sassy, and it’s fantastic.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, she can keep pace with Wynonna, no problem, and I love the way that Half has structured the dialogue in that there’s not a lot of comma, he said, comma, she said, type thing, it’s really just line of dialogue, line of dialogue, we get one mid-way through the conversation, just to sort of refresh our memories as to who’s saying what, y’know, or it’ll be like, “answered Nicole,” y'know, and then the next line will be like “stated Wynonna,” or whatever, or “snarked Wynonna.”

And then we just kind of keep going, and as – but we still know who’s saying what, ‘cause it’s definitely in each character’s voice, but because it’s structured that way, where it’s basically just line, line, line, line, line, it reads like a real snappy back and forth. Which is what it is, and it’s usually – well, not usually, it’s always – really funny.

DELAYNE : Which – I don’t remember, I didn’t write it down, but someone said, “Waverly, who is chronically confused despite how smart she is.” That was one of my other favorite lines. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : I think that was one – was that not Wynonna, who said that?

DELAYNE : Oh, it was either –

DARKWICCAN : Or was it –

DELAYNE : - I think Chrissy was in the scene too, so I’m not sure if it –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah.

DELAYNE : That’s why.

DARKWICCAN : Chrissy is another one, really great – everybody, just really terrific dialogue in this. Half had a gift for dialogue, and communicating character through dialogue. And that is not different here, with this, with these two pieces. I also really like how at, kind of at the end of scenes, especially scenes between Waverly and Nicole how they’ll go back and forth – they’re basically agreeing, together. But they’re still being redundant and re-stating things together, and it’s like, “Yes, I know. I know, I’m right. I know you’re right, I agree. Okay. Agreed? Agreed.” [laughter]

DELAYNE : And that speaks to me because when my wife and I are arguing, but not arguing, y'know, it’s that – it’s sound to an outsider, it probably sounds like an argument, but it’s not, really, we’re just agreeing and it’s sassy, and sarcastic, and it – it might sound weird to other people, but I totally identified with the dialogue between those two, definitely.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. So I mean, honestly, if you read this story for none of the other elements, read it for the dialogue, because it is just absolutely hilarious.

DELAYNE : Oh, one more. This is a Chrissy and Wynonna line, where Wynonna says, referring to Waverly’s ex from high school, “I wish I could have punched him in the face.” And Chrissy’s like, “Well, technically, you still can.” [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, technically she still can, probably not a good idea, yeah. [laughter]

DELAYNE : Oh, I guess another note - this is definitely one I want to talk about – is that determined Wynonna. Y'know, we always see oblivious Wynonna, and funny Wynonna, but we see determined Wynonna in this and that comes across so well.

DARKWICCAN : It really does. You’re absolutely right. That is an element of the Wynonna on the show that we don’t generally see brought over into fic. ‘Cause as you said, it’s all the other Wynonnas that we get.

DELAYNE : Right.? ‘Cause those are funny, and – but we still have funny Wynonna, but we see determined, and when she is on a mission, she’s going to get shit done, she is on it. And it’s stated a lot through the dialogue, it’s Wynonna herself saying, “Dammit, we’re doing this.”

DARKWICCAN : Yes. Yeah. And she’s driven by her desire to protect Waverly. Which again, absolutely true to character.

Something that really caught my attention in the first story, the Cryptozoology story, was how for say, two thirds of the story, it was really, really a comedy. It was like horror-comedy, kind of like – and the funny thing is, the characters actually keep making references to horror-comedies, like Scream. But essentially it was a comedy, so there was sort of a light quality to it, it was very lightweight, y'know.

And then about two-thirds in, around the time within the storyline that winter break is happening, it turns and becomes really heavier and more serious, and the consequences become a little more dire and dangerous. And for me, that was when – this was actually the first story I read by Half – and for me that was when I kind of went, “Okay, this writer knows what they’re doing, they know how to shape a story, they know how to create that turn without it feeling jarring and sudden, but very kind of earned, and intriguing.

So, do you know the portion I’m talking about?

DELAYNE : Yes, I do, and I think that’s actually what I was thinking about, in a similar of – is it a spoiler to say Nicole’s in trouble?

DARKWICCAN : No, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Nicole’s in trouble.

DELAYNE : And there’s a few of those scenes that made me think of Season Two. There’s a few of those, in the way that they play out. And that’s what it was, that reminded me –

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, yeah.

DELAYNE : So, yeah. So yes, I do know which part you’re talking about, and it – I didn’t even think about it that way, but you are correct. I mean it’s hard, and sudden, but it doesn’t feel jarring or wrong.

DARKWICCAN : It doesn’t feel like it’s just been stuck in there, right? It makes sense, with the build-up that Half was laying down all the way up to that point.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : ‘Cause sometimes you’ll read a fic and all of a sudden they’ll take a left turn, and it’ll get either super-serious – it’ll go in some direction opposite to the direction it was going in to start, and it just feels like, “This – am I reading the same fic, or are we suddenly in a different story?” And that is absolutely not the case with this one.

And the whole story itself moves at a pretty decent clip, too. It’s twenty chapters long, but it doesn’t feel twenty chapters long. Actually, when I went back to re-read it I was surprised it was twenty chapters long. ‘Cause I didn’t remember it being that long.

DELAYNE : Oh, the total word count is thirty-four thousand, so. I mean, they’re not super long chapters, like some authors do, but it’s still, that’s quite a bit to read in one sitting. And, yeah, I got maybe halfway through, ‘cause I go to bed early. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, you also have to get up at oh-god-it-hurts-me o’clock, so…

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So, yeah, you get a pass there.

DELAYNE : I was surprised I got as far as I did on my re –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. But one thing we touched on earlier was when you mentioned that Waverly starts of the story as seventeen, and then I mentioned, “Oh yes,” and then Nicole gets to have a gay panic attack. There’s this fantastic moment at Waverly’s birthday party in the story, where Nicole suddenly realizes just how much younger Waverly is than she is. And really, it’s not – it’s three years, it’s not a big deal.

It’s less than on the show, but Nicole being lawful good, as we’ve talked about before, starts to panic because even though she and Waverly were not even in a relationship, they hadn’t even confessed their feelings to one another, even in spite of this Nicole is like, “Oh my god, I had a crush on a minor, what is wrong with me!” [laughter] “I’m a bad person.”

And as I recall it was Chrissy Nedley who had to knock some sense into her.

DELAYNE : Yes! I was going to say, it was Chrissy who sorted her out there.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter] I also love the little asides that Half leaves in her post-chapter notes, like, at one point –

DELAYNE : Oh!

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. At one point she has Nicole out of uniform ‘cause she’s not working that day. And she had her in shorts, black shorts, a t-shirt, flannel, a snap-back that was –

DELAYNE : Chuck Taylors!

DARKWICCAN : Chuck Taylors – red Chuck Taylors – and a snap-back she was wearing backwards on her head, so the bill was backwards. And after, in the post chapter notes, Half goes, “Yes, that was the most gay outfit I could possibly put Nicole in.”

DELAYNE : And then I don’t know if we’re ready to jump ahead to Demonology, but when Wynonna yells, “We get it, you’re gay!”

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Yes!

DELAYNE : - to Nicole. Listening to her music, and the way she was dressed, and –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, that’s right. And her car -

DELAYNE : - her car.

DARKWICCAN : - and the whole thing. And there were so many – hang on a second. Before we jump to Demonology, let me just wrap up Monsterology really quickly.

DELAYNE : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : So, Monsterology. Coffee Shop, College, Pokémon – which we didn’t really get into, doesn’t matter – AU story, _Ghostbusters_ AU story. Essentially, haunted buildings on campus and these meddling kids set out to solve the mystery, and eventually –

DELAYNE : Save the day.

DARKWICCAN : - and yeah, save the day. And eventually, there’s a resolution. What I really enjoy, though, is that they don’t make it to that resolution without a decent amount of property destruction. [laughter] Things do not come out unscathed in the process of trying to solve this mystery, which I find hilarious. And it carries over into the sequel, Demonology.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Absolutely.

DARKWICCAN : So, let’s see, Demonology –

DELAYNE : Best line ever: “Where did he get the dynamite?” [laughter] “I have my sources.”

DARKWICCAN : Yes. [laughter] Yeah. And we know who had the dynamite, we don’t need to identify that character. But Demonology takes place, what, is it six or nine years later?

DELAYNE : Multiple years? Uh…

DARKWICCAN : I think it’s nine.

DELAYNE : I gotta check.

DARKWICCAN : ‘Cause Waverly would have had to have graduated from college, right? Does it say?

DELAYNE : Um, I know there’s a reference to how long Waverly and Nicole were married, which I think was six years.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, so I’m just going to say around nine years later. Give or take, ish. Because they could have gotten married while Waverly was still in college. So we’ll just say in that ballpark. It takes place, later. And the old college gang are still together and they have their own ghost hunting TV show now! [laughter]

DELAYNE : And it starts out with the TV show, and then it cuts away to Wynonna watching their TV show.

DARKWICCAN : That’s because you know that if this was an actual thing – you know – [laughter] that is so true, that she would get such a kick out of watching her own show. [laughter] So Half, basically, so – the cool thing about Demonology is it’s only two chapters, so it’s a real, real quick follow up to the initial story. And –

DELAYNE : And the chapters themselves, it’s a very quick-paced, kind of, jump around, a lot of dialogue and banter that is fantastic, but it’s very fast-paced as well.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And yeah, I think each chapter’s probably around thirty-five hundred words, ish, give or take. Thirty-five, thirty-seven hundred – doesn’t matter. You’re not sitting there counting the words, you’re reading the words. So don’t worry about it. So, this ghost hunting television show of theirs has taken them all over the world, similar to, if any of you guys out there watch _Ghost Hunters_ on Sy-fy, basically that type of scenario. And the interesting thing is that the stuff that they do for their show is all fake, but they do still actually –

DELAYNE : I love that part.

DARKWICCAN : - go out and hunt, or try to bust, actual, genuine paranormal scenarios, so. [laughter]

DELAYNE : Right! ‘Cause the real stuff can’t be on TV, but you got to get attention and funding by –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, exactly.

DELAYNE : - by faking it.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm. But Half basically –

DELAYNE : I love that.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that’s great.

DELAYNE : It’s genius. It’s genius.

DARKWICCAN : It really is. So, Half basically spends the first chapter sort of providing this set-up for this is who they are now, this is what they’ve been doing. And to lead us into sort of the – or to set us up, rather, for the back half of the story – she has this thing where Wynonna goes online after the episodes air to see what people in the message boards are saying.

And apparently there is an issue in the message boards of people shipping Waverly with Xavier. Because Nicole is a camera person, she’s not actually on camera. So, I mean, she’s been on camera a few times, they kind of mention that, but really she’s not on camera, she’s not seen. But oftentimes – apparently – Xavier and Waverly are paired up in these ghost hunts, so the forums have been going nuts, basically, talking about how they’re a couple.

And, finally Waverly and Nicole say enough is enough, and they sit down and I guess they do this sort of post episode, after-thought videos that they post on Youtube or something, or on their channel.

DELAYNE : Right, little webisodes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. Really, the stuff that actually gets done, y'know. So Half is actually pulling from reality here, y'know, as far as what theses reality TV shows do, and how they interact with their audience, right?

DELAYNE : And pulling, yeah, pulling from people shipping stuff that maybe they shouldn’t be.

DARKWICCAN : Exactly. Which –

DELAYNE : Nope, never mind.

DARKWICCAN : Zip, zip, zip, zip, zip. Yeah, don’t get me started. So, at least not in this segment. [laughter]

So, basically, Waverly and Nicole go onto this little after-thought video, and they come out as a married couple, and basically to just try to stop the shipping problem. And sure enough, after doing that, it seems like the shipping problem seems to stop. But a new –

DELAYNE : It’s not mentioned.

DARKWICCAN : It’s not mentioned, but you kind of assume because –

DELAYNE : There’s the bigger problem.

DARKWICCAN : - there’s a bigger problem in that now Waverly has a stalker, and they have to deal with that. So, in an effort to sort of get everybody out of town and away from – ‘cause the stalker has their address, so that’s bad – so in effort to get everybody out of town, they basically take on a new case and the rest of the fic focuses on them resolving that case.

DELAYNE : Right. And it’s a real case, not a fake case that is supposed to be done for the camera.

DARKWICCAN : Right.

DELAYNE : It’s something that is potentially real.

DARKWICCAN : Exactly, exactly. So they – that’s, again, what the last third of the story’s about, is them going on this legitimate ghost hunt to try to bust some ghosts.

DELAYNE : Yeah, now we’re in definite spoiler territory.

DARKWICCAN : Now we’re in spoiler territory, so we kind of got to – yeah, you’re right, you’re right.

DELAYNE : This is your warning! Stop, go read the fic, come back please.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, Well, really, I mean, I think we sort of covered everything that we can cover without being able to ask somebody what was going on the process of writing it, and I think a good somebody to ask would be the author herself.

What do you think?

DELAYNE : I think that’s a fantastic idea.

DARKWICCAN : Terrific!

DELAYNE : We should probably keep doing that.

DARKWICCAN : We should probably keep doing that. So, yes, we invited Half to join us for our second segment today and she graciously accepted, so we’ll be able to chat with her shortly, and ask her a whole bunch of questions, and get to the bottom of this ghost-busting thing.

[CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Darkness Descends by Sideshow sound Theatre

DARKWICCAN : And welcome back to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my co-host:

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we have been spending this episode chatting about one of our favorite little series in the _Wynonna Earp_ fiction fandom, which is the Monsterology series by Half. And, as you know, we have managed to get Half to agree to come on the hot seat and speak with us about her stories. Half, welcome to the show.

HALF : Hi there!

DARKWICCAN : So, Half, it is so wonderful for you to come on and chat with us, we are so excited to have you here today.

HALF : Yeah, well thank you for inviting me.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, our pleasure, absolutely. Something that we do like to ask all of our authors before we kind of dive in is; how did you get started in writing fanfiction?

HALF : Well, honestly, _Wynonna Earp_ is the first series that I’ve written for. I wrote one for CSI like ten years ago, and other than that, I guess, just decided that I wanted to take a shot at it. I’m kind of a semi-professional write in my spare time, so, I figured that it would be a good way, sort of, work out the writer’s block kink. So that’s sort of what led to my first one, and then from there just kind of spiraled semi out of control.

DELAYNE : [laughter] That sounds like a familiar thread.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, I can – I think, yeah, we can relate to that for sure. So you say you’re semi-pro writer, have you like self-published, or what are you writing in the real world?

HALF : Yeah, I self-publish, mostly like sci-fi/fantasy stuff, so.

DARKWICCAN : Nice, and yeah – and may I enquire as to your _nom de plume_ for these self-published novels?

HALF : My pen name is Alex Kost.

DARKWICCAN : Alex…?

HALF : Kost. K-O-S-T.

DARKWICCAN : K-O-S-T. Thank you, sorry. Alex Kost. Okay.

HALF : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So, if we were to go on, let’s say, Amazon or something, we’d look up this name and be able to find some of your works?

HALF : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome! Totally doing that. And we’ll provide a link in the show notes, so.

HALF : Cool, free advertisement.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Awesome.

DELAYNE : Well, that’s fine, y'know, when I started writing fanfic it was sort of – or at least, as Delayne emerged onto the internets – it was to garner attention to someday write an actual – and I have not. I’ve barely read any fanfic, but hey, here we are. So, I get it, I understand.

HALF : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So - but today we’re here to talk about your Monsterology series. Which I believe – in the number of fics that you’ve written, where in the timeline does this exist, as far as your writing goes? Was it one of your early endeavors, more toward the middle…?

HALF : I know Demonology, which is the sequel, is a later one, it’s more recent. Cryptozoology would be the second _Wynonna Earp_ fic I wrote.

DELAYNE : Oh, really.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, nice, okay. So kind of a sophomore effort, to use the college vernacular.

HALF : Yeah, it was the first multi-chapter one I wrote for the fandom.

DELAYNE : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha, nice.

DELAYNE : And my goodness, there are so many elements to this fic. So, I’m curious as to what was the first one that spawned. Was it the coffee shop, the college part, the ghosts? Or perhaps the Pokémon?

HALF : The Pokémon was added as just like, a side-note, because I saw some people – I was disagreeing with what people were saying their teens were going to be, so that was just kind of added in. It was probably coffee shop and college at kind of the same time.

DELAYNE : Okay.

HALF : Because the first one I wrote was the Hogwarts AU, so I was already kind of writing the school stuff. So I was like, oh well, I’ll write a college one. But then I also wasn’t a big fan of Coffee Shop AUs, just because I’m not really a big fan of the flirting at work kind of element of it. But since I figured that if you kind of threaded that into a college fic, then it would sort of make up for that.

DELAYNE : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, yeah, I get what you’re saying there.

DELAYNE : Then when did the ghosts come in?

HALF : The ghosts actually just because I happened to already kind of have that for my own campus, that sort of ghost story in there, but also I hadn’t actually decided until half-way through the fic whether or not the ghosts were going to be real.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, well actually that’s a good lead-in, ‘cause I was going to say you mention in your chapter notes that the theater building was based on an actual building from your college campus. So is the ghost story that Doc tells the same story as from your school?

HALF : Yeah, it’s mostly the same. The parts there, the haunting rumors, the props going missing, the piano music playing at night; that stuff was part of the same ghost story that was told at my school. The murder-mystery part of it is also mostly the same, parts of it were changed just to make it an easier story to tell.

But it was still a girl that got murdered on the stage during late-night practice in our theater building. And people claimed that it was suicide, but that was literally impossible because there was no knife and I think she was actually wrapped up in something, so. Kind of hard to kill yourself.

DARKWICCAN : She accidently lethally stabbed herself while playing the piano.

HALF : Yes, yes.

DELAYNE : And then wrapped herself up. Yep.

HALF : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and then wrapped herself up. Oh, man, sorry, that reminds me of that thing that happened in that episode of _Buffy_. Delayne, do you know which one I’m talking about? Where they’re trying to figure out how this guy died, and it’s trying to be called a suicide, and she’s like, “Okay, wait a minute. So, first he –“ It was the episode, the Squamish episode, remember? The Thanksgiving episode?

DELAYNE : Yeah, okay, gotcha, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : “First she slit her neck, then she hid the knife, then – no, wait a minute…” Yeah, sorry, sorry, Buffy side-trip there.

DELAYNE : I took me a moment to catch up, that’s fine.

HALF : That’s fine.

DARKWICCAN : Sorry, Delayne, because I confused you for a second there, please do – I’m going to hand over to you.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Okay, so, yesterday I downloaded Pokémon Go and went for a little bit of a walk. [laughter] Finally got to level five, so I was able to, y'know, pick my team, and I am a scientist, and blue is my favorite color, so I picked team Mystic.

So I’m curious as to what is your team, and a follow up as to you disagreeing with what people though Nicole and Waverly were, then why you did disagree, and why you chose what you chose.

HALF : I’m Instinct. Which is the yellow one, with Zapdos. Partly because people at my work were the same team, and I didn’t realize at the time that no-one anywhere near me was going to be team Instinct, so the gym situation was going to be a problem.

DELAYNE : Yes, I discovered blue is the wrong color for this area.

HALF : Yes. But part of the reason I disagreed was just, it was sort of again tying into that Hogwarts house situation, where a lot of people think that they’re Hufflepuff, but I don’t agree with that. So a lot of times that sort of spreads its way into it, where people were saying that, “Oh, well they have to be Instinct, it’s yellow, it’s the soft, fluffy house – team, whatever.” So I just didn’t quite agree with that, so it sort of compounded its way from there.

DELAYNE : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : Tagging onto Delayne’s question there; how did you make the decision of the houses you did put them in? Or team, not houses, sorry, I’m -

HALF : I could be here all day doing that. [laughter] For Waverly, I had her in Gryffindor.

DARKWICCAN : Okay.

HALF : And for that it was more of a, y'know, she’s a lot – she’s very reckless in certain things, and she also does the – I mean, take a look at her decision to basically hand the ring over, in terms of just – to save Nicole, it’s one of those, like, shotgun, automatically do everything. She’s very passionate and brave, but in a sort of reckless way. Which – a reckless bravery is sort of the definition of Gryffindor in terms of – from my opinion.

DELAYNE : And that makes sense for Team Valour, ‘cause they’re sort of like the strong arm.

HALF : Yeah, yeah. And for Nicole, she’s – I put her in Ravenclaw and Team Mystic, because for a lot of that is very logical, very intelligence based, but also very much – I’ve seen Ravenclaws described as sort of, like, they are intelligent, but it’s almost kind of like herding cats.

Because I could totally see Nicole being like that in college, where it’s sort of like, y'know, she’s very smart and can do very various things but it’s also only what she’s interested in, in certain ways. So, y'know, she’ll spend all of her time researching how to do, y'know, how to get the best police work done, how to find the – how to solve the cases in the Purgatory Case-file, and she’ll have all of her notes down of all of those things, but then for other things she might not be as attentive for certain things.

And I think that a lot of times characters get sorted into Hufflepuff based on, “Oh, well, they’re kind” characters, when that’s all that that really is.

DARKWICCAN : Right.

DELAYNE : Right, being nice doesn’t automatically put you in Hufflepuff or –

HALF : Yes.

DELAYNE : - Team Instinct.

DARKWICCAN : But yeah. But actually, speaking to something you were just saying, about Nicole being very smart but only working hard at the things that she’s interested in, that – okay. You do a really terrific job of capturing a very youthful kind of vibrancy in each of your version of the _Wynonna Earp_ characters in these stories. So, you make them seem younger than the characters on the show while still retaining, y'know, their core selves.

So what elements did you focus on in sort of regressing, especially like Nicole and Wynonna, to make them come across as younger, while still sticking to who they are at their core?

HALF : Ironically there was less drinking. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : That is ironic, yes.

HALF : Yes. But one of the things I was trying to do was take like, y'know, they all – they both have loyalty, they have their love for Waverly, they have their witty banter, and their dedication for doing the right thing, if in a reckless way. And sort of just apply that to what a college setting would be.

So, y'know, they might run headfirst into something because they’re cops, but Nicole is a campus cop, she doesn’t have a gun, she can’t, y'know, make an arrest, so when she gets into trouble it’s more of a, “Well, I have a Taser, what am I supposed to do with this if there’s a ghost?” [laughter]

Meanwhile, with Wynonna, it’s sort of the same sort of situation where she’d going to run headfirst into something, but she is a kid, in college, and she has to break into a building to do something, she has no actual right to be there, and when something goes wrong, she has no actual way back out.

There’s just, “There’s something wrong, I don’t know how to solve it, all I can do is sort of be with my friends and hope we don’t die.” Which is in a way similar to what happens in the show, but they have more recourse.

DARKWICCAN : Right, they have more resources to be able to, y'know, get themselves out of situations they get themselves into.

HALF : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha. That makes sense, you’re absolutely right, they do sort of barrel into situations and then find themselves going, “Okay, well we’re here now, uh –“ [laughter]

HALF : Yes. We're standing in the middle of a stage....

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. “And now what?” Yeah. Or: “We’re going to die. How do we not?” [laughter]

DELAYNE : Yeah. So, I remember, in college, this is when we first had cell phones, and I was so excited to get a phone that I could customize ring tones. So one of my favorite scenes is the Haught pun ringtones. So I’m curious as to what ringtone does Waverly have for Wynonna? And does Nicole have one for Waverly, and what would that be?

HALF : Well, they do, and it probably is a bit more boring that Waverly’s for Nicole’s, because Waverly went for the more, like, snarky response, but for them they’d probably be a little bit more serious, although Nicole’s for Waverly’s would actually be Snapback by Old Dominion. [laughter] Just to sort of, like, rub it in a bit.

Waverly’s for Wynonna, I would probably have to go with Brother by Kodaline, which sounds strange because they’re sisters, but the song just sort of has that sibling-y kind of thing I like. And I like that sort of musical tone for them.

I have others, if you were interested?

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yes, do tell. Yes please.

DELAYNE : Yes.

HALF : If Nicole – Nicole and Wynonna, I think would have the same for each other, which would be The Kids Aren’t Alright by Fall Out Boy. [laughter] And in that same Gryffindor fashion, I think Wynonna for Waverly would have Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : I love how much thought you’ve put into this.

HALF : Yes.

DELAYNE : That just made my day.

HALF : I’m glad.

DARKWICCAN : And you know we’re totally going to list those songs and provide links to –

HALF : Good.

DARKWICCAN : - to them on Spotify or something. So, Monsterology – well, Cryptozoology, which was the first one we’ve been talking about here, the longer piece – was really just kind of a fun college romp that gets a little serious toward the end, gets a little bit actual –

HALF : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - actual danger. But, y'know, we have a resolution in the end, I don’t think that’s too much of a spoiler to say, we have a resolution and it’s not a bad one. But then you came back and picked up with Demonology, a very short sequel to Cryptozoology, and I got to say I love the whole premise of the group having graduated from college and going on to create a sort of _Ghost Hunter_ -style television show. I just think that’s hilarious and so perfect.

But I also liked how you used this premise as a way to sort of address some things that can be semi, y'know, problematic in fandoms. And in this case you address the discomfort that Waverly and Nicole experience from viewers of their ghost hunting show shipping Waverly with Xavier. Y'know, which I think that anyone who had half a clue and is involved in the Wynonna Earp fandom can see where this might be drawing from in reality.

Did you have any sort of pushback for pointing this out?

I mean, first of all, let me say, before you answer that, I am on your side and I can speak confidently that Delayne is too, it’s something we talk about on Tumblr a lot, I myself have been vocal on Twitter that it is none of our business. What’s going on in the actors’ private lives, is their private lives. And it’s not – it’s completely inappropriate for us to project anything onto them, and especially involve them in conversations online, y'know? It’s one thing to have a conversation in private with a friend, it’s another to try to tag in the actors or actresses who are the focus of your conversation.

So, I’m just curious, did you have any sort of a pushback when you made this statement in your fic?

HALF : I have to answer this diplomatically.

DELAYNE : Oho, that’s a good start. [laughter]

HALF : I will say that I did get some messages on Tumblr from some people that thought that I was referring to them –

DARKWICCAN : They thought you were attacking them personally?

HALF : To a degree, yes. People get very passionate about how they interact with their fandom, and there’s a certain way were there’s certain behavior around shipping people in real life that can get to where you’re either joking about it, or not joking about. And that can get blurred to certain degrees. And if you are trying to talk about in a negative fashion, then both of those groups can get upset. And to - in some ways those people – I’m answering this very well [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : It’s okay.

DELAYNE : We all have our moments of eloquence.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. I’ll admit this is the hardest softball question I’ve ever asked, so.

HALF : Yes. Yeah, I would say that it’s something that I did get some pushback about, specifically just from the fact that there are people that think that I would be attacking them directly on this subject. And sometimes – and that wasn’t my intention at all – it’s just something that it’s a very real issue that I am very much against, so I wanted to put it into that fic for that reason.

DELAYNE : Purposefully making a statement.

HALF : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm. But you also used this not just as a platform, you used it as a jumping-off point in the plot.

HALF : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So, so, it wasn’t just you going –

HALF : Listen, I would say – I will also say that the first two - the two chapters of this fic – the one that was first was posted on Friday the 13th, and the second was posted on Halloween – most of the kickback occurred after the first chapter when the relevance to the plot was not as obvious.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s kind of – y'know, I can get that, I remember when I first read the first chapter, I got to the end and I was just sitting there going, “Yeah, girl, yeah, you get ‘em!” y'know? [laughter] “You show how this can be bad. Yes.” In fact, I actually contacted you over Tumblr, I was like, “Hey, you don’t know me, I’m a fellow fic author, and –“

HALF : That was you!

DARKWICCAN : That was me. Yeah.

HALF : That was you.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

HALF : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : I was like, “Hey, I’m on your side. Don’t let the haters get you down.”

HALF : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : But like I said, you rather brilliantly used that as a jumping off point in the plot. And – so in the first fic, you title it Cryptozoology, and I’m curious what within the fic was that really, sort of, the title pointing to? Was it pointing to the Pokémon element? Was it pointing to the Bobo element? Was it – where did the sort of zoological element come into play? Because in – the reason why I ask –

HALF : So -

DARKWICCAN : - go ahead, no, no, you go ahead and answer.

HALF : No, I was just – Cryptozoology is sort of, like, cryptids, like the Jersey Devil, Bigfoot, those types of things, so they’re kind of like, it’s like the study of those certain creatures that we generally refer to as urban legends but they’re basically just, like, y'know, the sort of things that we don’t necessarily believe in  but they’re – they’re cryptids, it’s the study of cryptids.

DELAYNE : I actually did  Google –

HALF : So –

DELAYNE : - the term so that – ‘cause I wanted to know the etymology –

HALF : Yes. And -

DELAYNE : - I understood the zoology part.

HALF : Yes. And I think ghosts fall under that, I’m actually not one hundred per cent sure, but for the most part it’s just a word that I’ve always been very fond of, so it sort of like circles back to the end where they decide to, sort of, look into more of those things in more general terms, instead of just ghosts they look into everything.

DELAYNE : Right, if someone called them up and said, “Hey, find us Bigfoot,” they’d be like, “We’re on it.”

HALF : Exactly. So it’s sort of a reference to every aspect of what they’re, sort of, what they’re leading up to, because you don’t know necessarily whether or not they’re hunting a demon, a ghost – ‘cause, I mean, the guy’s painting symbols on the wall – so, I mean, it’s sort of one of those things where it was partially a fun word to use, and partially, y'know, the end result of what they’re going through.

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha. Which leads me then to Demonology. Now, what I inferred - and I ask you to please correct me of I am utterly wrong about this – but what I inferred from the title for Demonology is that it was a reference to – I mean, without giving anything away, ‘cause we’re very careful in our first segment to not spoil stuff as much as we could. So we haven’t said what the antagonist is. But the title, to me, I find very intriguing, because it feels like it’s referring to those darker parts of humanity rather than actual demons. But, I don’t know.

HALF : Yea, I would say that’s fair. It’s a combination of fitting in with the theme of the titles - so Cryptozoology, Demonology, Monsterology – and also the fact of the theme of that second work. Y’know, it’s a Halloween fic and the – it’s a darker fic. Just sort of, like, darker fic, darker title.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, that makes absolute sense too. I tend to mine things a little too much. I, like, go digging. I wordsmith stuff to the point where it’s just dust. [laughter]

DELAYNE : You are quite the wordsmith, DW, I will give you a nod to that.

DARKWICCAN : Well, thank you. So, do you have – this is an unfinished, currently check-boxed as unfinished on AO3, as far the series goes – do you have plans to re-visit this little alternate universe you’ve created?

HALF : I’m not entirely sure yet. Partially, because I didn’t know that you could mark series as finished.

DARKWICCAN : Oh! [laughter] Yes, you can.

DELAYNE : Yeah, that’s a thing.

DARKWICCAN : You can mark it as finished.

HALF : So part of that is I didn’t know you could do that. But, I’m not entirely sure. I would have to, first of all, have a good theme title, and also it would need to be the right plot. I don’t like dragging things on longer than they need be going on. Y'know, there are certain fics that I’ve had requests to continue that I feel like we will not, just because I think that they’re finished the way that they are.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm.

HALF : And this I think would probably be one of them.

DARKWICCAN : Makes sense.

HALF : There’s a few others, but, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, that’s fair. That’s absolutely fair.

HALF : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Well, cool. Well, Half, I just want to thank you so much for taking time out of your weekend to chat with us about Monsterology. It has been an absolute blast.

HALF : Yes, it’s been fun. Thank you.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. But before we let you go, we got one more question. Can’t let you out of the hot seat just yet.

HALF : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : And it’s a question we ask all of our authors, and I’m going to turn the table over to Delayne, to pin you down with this hardball.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Alright. So, you are stranded on a desert island, and can have only one fic to read. What is it?

HALF : I would have to choose one that’s already finished because that way I can actually read the full thing, just in pieces. And I also think that everyone’s going to say the same ones, I’m going to go a little bit off the range, a bit, and say Open Range Hearts.

DARKWICCAN : Open Range Hearts, that is an excellent choice.

HALF : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : That is an excellent choice. Very cool.

HALF : Mhm.

DELAYNE : I agree, I tend to filter towards complete, and like the multi-chapters, y'know, Big, heavy books. As long as it’s complete, I’m a little picky.

HALF : Yes. Which is a little hypocritical of me to say, given how many unfinished I have going at the moment, but –

DELAYNE : Same here.

HALF : - but, I mean, if I was on a desert island, I would definitely want one that was finished.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So, absolutely. Open Range Hearts.

DELAYNE : And as thick as possible!

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So, Open Range Hearts, by thewaywedo33, also known as HaughtsCuffs.

HALF : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Well, awesome. We will definitely include a link to that. We got a lot of links going in the show notes for this episode, I am very excited.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : And since you’re doing all of the work for that, I’m excited.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, yeah.

DELAYNE : I love you, DW, I hope you know that.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I love you too, Delayne, you’re my buddy. Well, Half, we’ll get you out of this awkward situation between Delayne and I and – [laughter] Thank you again, so much, for coming on the show. It’s been just a blast chatting with you.

HALF : Absolutely, it’s been fun. Thank you.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's a wrap for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for tuning in.

Tremendous thanks to Half for joining us on air to discuss the Monsterology Series. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro and to MJ for [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story and In Case of Trouble by Darren Korb; Darkness Descends by Sideshow sound Theatre and; the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast
> 
> We're also on iTunes!


	8. Six Short Shorts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week DW and Delayne trade their favorite 'Short Shorts'! Six fantastic one-shots are on the table and we can't wait to share them!
> 
> Then we interview Wrackwonder (aka Elle) about her work 'In Between'!

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/six-short-shorts)

ORIGINAL AIR DATE: MAR 5, 2018

 

Read the fics!:

["i feel them growing in my lungs, can you?"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12661404) by lambsauced 

["Like the Bones of the Earth"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12640353) by Baggerheda 

["Sweet Oblivion"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7105924) by Trufreak89 

["Sick of Losing Soulmates"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12873753) by iwaseliteonce 

["Icarus Is Flying (Too Close to the Sun)"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11541870) by TheGaySmurf 

["In Between"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12034977) by wrackwonder 

 

  
Wrackwonder's Desert Island fic: ['make this leap (say geronimo)'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3885451) by adventurousfeather (The 100 Fandom) 

  
TRANSCRIPT FOR THE DEAF AND HOH BY FLYING FANATIC

 

EFA EPISODE 08 – SIX SHORT SHORTS

 

[sic] – Indicates preceding word or phrase has been reproduced verbatim and is not a transcription error.

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction, I am your host DarkWiccan and with me is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And this week we’re excited to come at you with just an abundance of fanfic titles for your pleasure.

DELAYNE : Hold on to something, we’re just going to run at you.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, so brace for impact, ‘cause this episode we have decided to talk about our six favorite short shorts. Or six favorite one-shots.

DELAYNE : Yeah. When you proposed this, it’s like, “Oh, that’s going to be a tall order.” There’s a lot of one shots that I love, so it was tough to choose, I’m going to put that out there.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, definitely the tricky part. We each picked three, and narrowing down our massive lists of favorite one-shots was, as you say, Delayne, very daunting on both of our sides. But I think we narrowed down to the cream of the crop.

DELAYNE : One thing I like about our list is we actually have a pretty varied – we have sort of the gamut of ratings, I like that part.

DARKWICCAN : You’re right, I hadn’t noticed that, but you’re absolutely right, we do run the gamut, don’t we, from G to E.

DELAYNE : Yep. I even have a NR in there. Not that it’s – it’s probably a T, but actually –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, a NR. I was like –

DELAYNE : Yes, NR.

DARKWICCAN : - an R rating? But those don’t exist in fanfic.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : NR.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, Not Rated.

DELAYNE : Not Rated, as in the author chose not to give it a rating, because maybe they weren’t sure where it fit in.

DARKWICCAN : Or they just got started writing it and yeah, they weren’t sure where it was going to end up. So they didn’t want to –

DELAYNE : Well, It’s a one-shot, so you’re posting it just the – you already know what it is. It’s not a multi-chapter.

DARKWICCAN : Well, that’s true, but we don’t know how long this author’s spent, y'know, writing this particular piece before they posted it, so, y'know. Short on content doesn’t mean not long on writing effort. [laughter]

DELAYNE : Oh, don’t I know it. [laughter] I’ve been working on my other two for how long now? Well, actually, the first one on my list is that Not Rated, which I would put about T. The F-word is used once, otherwise it would probably be a G rated. And it’s called i feel them growing in my lungs, can you? by LambSauced

DARKWICCAN : Oh, right, yeah. I remember when we were putting our list together and you included this one, and I didn’t know what it was, unusually. [laughter] For me. And it’s because this is one where I’d read the description and didn’t quite understand it, so I was like, “Okay, stick a pin in it, I’ll come back to it later.” And I’m so glad you included it in your list.

DELAYNE : Because when you told me to make my list, that was the one that I went to first, automatically. The rest of it, actually, I had to sort of research, and decide. This one, I _knew_ was going on my list.

DARKWICCAN : So, okay, well, tell us the premise, and tell us why you were drawn to this one.

DELAYNE : So, apparently, there’s this – I guess I’ve seen it online described as a kink - but it’s a Hanahaki disease, and it’s about an unrequited love causes you to vomit up flowers, or flower petals. So, when you’re so in love with a person, you have flowers in your lungs, and you can’t breathe, and you are constantly spitting up flowers, and –

DARKWICCAN : That’s delightful. So, I’m guessing that this comes from manga, or anime, sort of that Japanese style… I’ve seen anime and mange with this element in it. And I didn’t know that’s what this was.

DELAYNE : Right, and I had never heard of it before, or seen it before, I haven’t seen a lot of anime or manga, myself, so. But the reason I’m drawn to it, if - I may have mentioned it before on this podcast – but I am a botanist and anything to do with plants, of course, I was totally going to read it.

And once I clicked on it and started reading it, the power of this unrequited love, and the power of this disease, it was just so painful. I mean, it was so moving, and I actually, like, hunted down LambSauced just to talk to her and, like, almost kind of check on her, too, just I – there was just so much sadness in it, I had to reach out to the author.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, when I read through it, after you had recommended it, I’m with you there, it was – it’s a very beautifully painful work. And I think the, sort of – what am I looking – what’s the word I’m looking for here? The fact that you can visually see the results of this unrequited love, and it’s manifesting itself in a physical way –

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - is so, so incredibly powerful. Also, I don’t – this is where you might be able to speak to the meaning of flowers – I don’t really know, I don’t follow that stuff, myself. I probably should, but no. But I wonder if the – she continues to cough up different flora. Like, she’s always got the constant purple flowers going on, right, and then –

DELAYNE : Well, it starts purple and white, and then come the carnations, which are yellow, and then a few more, yeah, are thrown –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. But, one thing that really caught my attention is the fact that Nicole won’t admit what the trouble is, because she knows, almost immediately, what it is.

DELAYNE : Right, and I hadn’t even thought about that, but, they even – Black Badge does a bunch of tests on her and she’s like, well, “I already know what’s going on, but go ahead, do your tests, it’s not going to tell you anything.”

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and that’s something that – the only thing that struck me as being a little bit like, “Huh,” is that Nicole is essentially able to WebMD her problem, and yet Black Badge couldn’t figure it out. Or maybe they knew what was going on, but they weren’t going to – much like Nicole was trying to be, y'know, keep the situation personal, maybe Black Badge was like, “Well, we’re not going to embarrass her, and point out to her what the problem is.”

DELAYNE : Oh, didn’t think about that.

DARKWICCAN : But, yeah, it’s a tough read, but it’s tough in a good way, it’s a hurts-so-good, I think, type situation?

DELAYNE : Yes, that is an accurate description. Hurts so good.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So, if you like a little chest pain when you’re reading, we highly recommend you check this one out. It’s – what’s the title, again, there, Delayne?

DELAYNE : i feel them growing in my lungs, can you? by LambSauced.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome. So that’s your first pick for this Six Short Shorts episode. And so now it’s my turn, hah hah [sic]. And my first pick is an explicit fic, but that’s not why I picked it. [laughter] But the reason why I picked this one is because it has a very dreamlike quality, and as I was looking, actually, at all three of my selections, I realize that that was a running theme, an inadvertent theme.

DELAYNE : Oh, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : All three of my choices have a sort of dreamy quality to theme. And so this one is called Like The Bones Of The Earth by Bagger _He_ da. And I’m probably mispronouncing that. Maybe it’s BaggerHe _da_ , I’m not sure. But -

DELAYNE : Wait, we need to find a _100_ watcher.

DARKWICCAN : Fan, yeah. Like, how is this pronounced?

DELAYNE : I assumed it was _He_ da, myself.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. But, yeah, Like The Bones Of The Earth by BaggerHeda. And the premise of it is that while they’re lying in bed, enjoying the afterglow, and Waverly is asleep, Nicole takes this opportunity to, sort, of, let her mind wander, and she starts thinking about her rock-climbing days. And she starts, sort of, drawing connections between her abilities and skillsets as a rock climber and how that translates into lovemaking, essentially.

And it’s a lot more introspective than it sounds, it’s not like, “Well, I can do this with my hands, because this one time, on a rock face.” It’s not like that. It’s really more – I know I use this word a lot – but it’s really evocative in how she, sort of, draws these connections and how she thinks back on her time when she was rock climbing avidly, and her time in nature, and camping out among the mountains, and the boulders, y'know, and it’s just a really lovely introspective piece that leads into, y'know, an adult situation. [laughter] But it’s – I – if you can’t tell – I’m a fan of this one.

DELAYNE : I definitely like that little bit of, sort of, backstory, and as you said, also the introspective part of it. It really shows – well, we learn more about Nicole, more than just, y'know, about the, oh yeah, she used to rock climb.

DARKWICCAN : Right, there’s more backstory that we get a glimpse at.

DELAYNE : I feel so eloquent right now. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : No, you don’t need to be eloquent. The fics, on the other hand –

DELAYNE : The fic is so eloquent, it’s okay that I am not.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. It balances out in the end. But, yeah, so if you are open to reading explicit material, and want to get a really nice, beautiful, kind of speculative exploration of Nicole’s history and how it influences her in her relationship with Waverly, highly recommend Like The Bones Of The Earth by BaggerHeda

DELAYNE : My turn.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm!

DELAYNE : So, y'know how I started doing the random fic recommendations, by actually –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah!

DELAYNE : - plugging numbers into the random number generator, and finding a page, and one through twenty on that page, and picking one?

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : The first time I did that, I came across Sweet Oblivion by TruFreak89.

DARKWICCAN : Oh. Who we’ve had on the show!

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : So what’s the premise of Sweet Oblivion? Before you answer that question, I’m going to go out on limb here and say that this particular piece, the title’s a bit of a giveaway as to what about it drew you in.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I love me some oblivious Wynonna. [laughter] And there’s multiple scenes, it kind of jumps through these scenes of Nicole and Waverly in a situation where Wynonna should be noticing that they are a couple and just continues to not. It even says, “Their relationship is the worst-kept secret in town. So everybody knows.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that is one thing, there were a couple of scenarios that TruFreak wrote where, y'know, she comes across Nicole and Waverly in a, y'know, what would considered a compromising position to anyone paying any sort of attention, and it almost felt like she was writing herself in knots trying to pull off Wynonna just being completely not even in the same mental space. And, I mean, it worked, one thing TruFreak is really good at is situational humor, and she definitely pulled that off with this short.

DELAYNE : I think my favorite of – well, it’s hard to pick a favorite of the scenes within the fic – but Wynonna screams, “Oh my god!” And they both pause, and Waverly’s, “Oh, I’m going to have to tell you, finally.” And it’s a only because Wynonna is so happy ‘cause Nicole went out of her way to bring both of them a coffee, but she put a little whiskey in it for Wynonna. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, my god, that’s right. “You Irished [sic] my coffee!”

DELAYNE : [laughter] And that, y'know, also, like you said, the situational humor, but that’s like so sweet of Nicole to bring coffee. ‘Cause when the scene first starts, she has two coffee mugs, come and bring one to Waverly, I assumed the other was hers, so –

DARKWICCAN : I did too!

DELAYNE : - the fact that she gave it to Wynonna and Irished it up for her was fantastic.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. This was almost a – no, it’s not a door slamming farce – but it was, kind of, sort of, approaching a French farce type situation, where –

DELAYNE : [laughter] You’ve got two doors, get somebody French farce in there.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Nice Buffy reference. Okay.

DELAYNE : Couldn’t help myself. But this fic has the best ending line of all time. And I won’t tell you, you need to go read it.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so that was Sweet Oblivion by TruFreak89.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Alright, so back to me. Alright, so, continuing on the previously established theme of fics that – short fics that have a somewhat dreamy quality, sticking with that here with Sick Of Losing Soulmates by iwaslightonce [sic].

DELAYNE : iwaselite, actually, is what it says.

DARKWICCAN : iwaseliteonce?

DELAYNE : Yeah, ‘cause I tried to look it up by iwaslightonce, and I realized there’s an e in there: iwaseliteonce.

DARKWICCAN : Oh my – have I been getting that poor author’s name wrong the whole time?

DELAYNE : I was, up until earlier today when I tried to search for it.

DARKWICCAN : Thank you for that correction. Iwaseliteonce, I am so sorry that I’ve been getting your name wrong. I think this is the first time I’ve got it wrong on the show, though, so.

DELAYNE : Right? So you can probably cut that out.

DARKWICCAN : I might. So the premise of this story is it takes place – it feels like, even though the author, iwaseliteonce, had called it and alternative universe – it feels like it takes place in the space when Nicole is in a medically induced coma after she’s been bitten by the widow, Mercedes.

DELAYNE : Oh, I didn’t even think about that!

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that’s what it seems like. And so she’s sort of slipping in and out of all of these different realities. So maybe that’s why iwaseliteonce is calling it an alt universe fic, because she is slipping in and out of multiple realities. But it seems like it’s within the framework of she’s in this medically induced coma.

DELAYNE : That’s a lot more poetic than my idea of _Futurama_ , and Farnsworth Paradox, so.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : The Anthology of Interest: Purgatory style. Yeah.

DELAYNE : Jumping through the boxes into the alternate universes.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : Yeah. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : [Imitating Professor Farnsworth] “Good news everyone, that’s not the case here.”

[normal voice] No, the case here is Nicole is living multiple lives, across multiple realities, one after the other, and in every reality she is paired with Waverly in some capacity. And some of these realities are very happy, and some of them are very dark, and some of them are sort of neutral, or frustrating. They’re frustrating because Nicole can see Waverly, but she can’t get to her in whatever scenario she’s fallen into.

So she’s sort of tripping and stumbling through all of these different realities until she finally comes back to herself. But the way that iwaseliteonce has framed each of these moments, each of these, sort of, experiences within these different multiverses is almost like – it’s almost like a dream, where you walk through a door expecting to end up in one room, and you end up in a completely different house in another state. And as you just, sort of, keep proceeding through these rooms, you just keep ending up in different realities in different versions of these room, and you can’t find your way out of this maze.

And I honestly, when I first read it, until I figured out what the conceit was, I was going, “What is happening?” But in such a good way. It was like, “I don’t know what’s happening, and that is great, I am so excited, I am on the edge of my seat. What’s going to happen next?”

DELAYNE : Yeah. Yeah. I remember when I first read that – now that mention it – yeah, it was, “Wait, what is going on?” But I’m so enthralled by each little bit, each little scene, I just - “Where am I going? I wanna know.”

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, exactly. “Where’s this ride going to take me next?” So, yeah, and it’s a short piece, it’s only a little over a thousand words, but iwaseliteonce packs so much into those thousand words. It feels quick, but it doesn’t at the same time. I don’t know how to explain it, you’re just going to have to go and read it, you’re just going to have to go and read Sick Of Losing Soulmates by iwaseliteonce.

DELAYNE : The only note I wrote was the first line is “The story is never the same.” Alright, so my turn. Alright, so for my final choice I went with Icarus Is Flying (Too Close to the Sun) by TheGaySmurf.

DARKWICCAN : Ah, another author who we’ve had on our show before.

DELAYNE : Does that mean I’m going with what I know, I guess?

DARKWICCAN : It means you have excellent taste.

DELAYNE : The notes that start out is that this fic was born because someone, I’m fairly certain, on Haught’s History, made a comment about how so much into playing pool – Nicole playing pool – they were. And so it’s a fic about Nicole playing a game of pool against Waverly, and there is a bet involved.

DARKWICCAN : Not a monetary bet.

DELAYNE : No, it’s Wynonna has to clean out the fridge. I guess for Nicole, if she loses she has to buy Wynonna a hundred dollar bottle of whiskey. And then, of course, between Waverly and Nicole it’s, “You have to do what I say.” To which, and this might give you a hint about – I don’t know if it’ll hint about who is winning – but Wynonna tells Nicole, [sic] “what are you complaining about? […] We’re both about to get fucked, but at least you’re gonna enjoy it.” [laughter] Or does she say that to Waverly? Oh my gosh, now I just realized, that doesn’t make sense. She says it to one of them! [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, we’ll leave it to the readers to figure out who.

DELAYNE : [laughter] That’s what happens when you’re making notes at the last minute before recording!

DARKWICCAN : I though this was a really fun, and funny, piece. TheGaySmurf has a talent for banter. She is really good at writing out the snark and spreading it around evenly, so everybody gets a chance. I really loved the top of the story, where Waverly is very, very patiently teaching Nicole how to play pool.

DELAYNE : Right? ‘Cause if she wanted to wrap her arms around me, and help me guide a pool stick, I would allow that to happen.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I’m not turning Waverly away if she wants to teach me how to play pool, and all of the, y'know, positioning my arm right, and getting my hips in the right position. Y'know, I’d be fine with that too. I can totally see why Nicole was game for a lesson or two. And to be true, I think if it was the other way around.

DELAYNE : Right? But I think it’s very true, growing up in a bar, like you’re just going to know how to play pool.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : ‘Cause the people I’ve known that have been around bars, or worked in bars, like they’re all really good at pool. I don’t – it amazes me.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I worked in a bar when I was seventeen, this was in Alabama, I was working actually not behind the bar, I was working as a sound and light technician for, they had a little stage set up for bands and what-not that would come through and gig. And so, I was with the theatre department at the high school, and I got a job there running lights and sound for these bands. But, y'know, between, y'know, when the bands would tear down and set up, y'know, I had tons of time, ‘cause those guys take _forever_ to set up their crap and there was a pool table and I spent my time playing pool. Now, am I as good now as I was then? No. [laughter] But I got to the point where I could, y'know, I could hold my own against the other regulars, so, yeah.

But you don’t want to hear about me playing pool, you definitely want to go and read, however, about Nicole and Waverly playing pool.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So, again, that’s Icarus Is Flying (Too Close to the Sun) by TheGaySmurf. Which brings us to my final pick. And my final pick is called In Between by wrackwonder. And I keep wanting to say The In Between, but it’s not, it’s just In Between by wrackwonder.

And this piece takes place after the Season Two finale. And when I say after, I mean that’s a bit of lie, because it takes place in the space between where we leave Wynonna and Doc on the hill, to where we see Wynonna riding her motorcycle, so. But this piece takes place the night after the events of Alice’s birth and sending her away, and dealing with the Widows, and all of that.

So, there’s this, sort of, I like to call it a grey space, that exists in the aftermath of loss. And so as we enter this story by wrackwonder we are in that grey space. They do this incredible job of setting that feeling within the scene, and really this piece is a moment for Nicole and Waverly to sort of, not really process what’s going on, or what has happened, more to just provide a balm of comfort for each other.

I should mention that this is rated Teen and Up. I would actually call it Mature.

DELAYNE : Yes. I actually made that note. We’ve had a few in this group that seems to be rated maybe a little differently than what it reads.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So what I really love about this story is that wrackwonder doesn’t try to have Waverly and Nicole have some sort of processing conversation. We’re lesbians, we love to process, that’s just part of who we are and how we engage with each other in relationships.

But it’s not always the right time for that, and what wrackwonder does with this story is gives us the alternative to processing, gives us the connection, the physical and emotional connection, in place of processing. And it’s something that Waverly needs, so Nicole gives it to her.

But it’s not what Nicole needs, and I like that, here. I like that Nicole becomes whatever Waverly needs in the moment, but when Waverly offers to do the same Nicole says, “No, I’m good.” And it’s not because she is good, she’s not. It’s because she has – is experiencing that sort of numb quality that sort of descends on us when we’ve been faced with just too much, and in this case it’s just too much of everything, so.

And wrackwonder doesn’t try to resolve it. They don’t try to provide a solution, they just say, “This is how it is, in this moment in time that I’m capturing.” So, that – I just love this story so much.

DELAYNE : I’m sitting here, silent. You have just blown my mind even more than that fic did, because just even listening to you talk about it, oh my gosh. That’s so, like, heavy, and the one thing I knew when reading this fic – I might not have picked up about Waverly and Nicole processing - but to me this is the type of thing that, as a writer, I would write because I’m processing dealing with what I have just watched. So.

DARKWICCAN : Processing the episode, yeah.

DELAYNE : Yes. Yeah. This is episode processing, or just dealing with feelings in general, that’s why I write fic. I’m sure it comes across.

DARKWICCAN : Y'know, I can – now that you mention that – I can see what you’re talking about, in _some_ of your work.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Not all of it.

DARKWICCAN : Others, is pure escapism.

DELAYNE : Okay, I’ll give you that.

DARKWICCAN : Let’s be honest.

DELAYNE : But, to me, this is a processing fic. That’s - and it was, y'know, it’s beautifully written and it’s just, kind of, back around to our first one, it’s something that’s heavy, but it’s beautiful and – no words, no words.

DARKWICCAN : I wonder if you’re right. I wonder if this was their way of working through the intensity of the Season Two finale.

DELAYNE : I think it’s actually mentioned – it’s hinted to in the notes, but, y'know, we can double check, for sure.

DARKWICCAN : We can because we get to talk wrackwonder in segment two. Hey! [laughter] We reached out to wrackwonder a while back, and asked if they would come on the show, and they said yes. And I got my pad of questions ready to go. [laughter]

DELAYNE : Yep, if I flip me page, bam, there they are.

DARKWICCAN : Excellent. But before we dive into that interview, we have to do that special thing that we do at the end of every primary segment of our show. And that is [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Climbing Further Up the Ginso Tree by Gareth Coker

DARKWICCAN : And welcome back everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my co-host.

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we are back after the quick break to discuss In Between with author wrackwonder, who for this podcast would like us to call her Elle, which we will do so happily. So, Elle, welcome to the show.

ELLE : Thanks guys.

DARKWICCAN : Thanks so much for coming on, really appreciate you taking time out of your weekend to chat with us.

ELLE : Yeah, you know, very busy – I’m not busy, I was honestly sleeping, so. Thanks for waking me up.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, thank you for allowing us to interrupt your nap.

ELLE : It’s a very rare happening so, y'know, you’re lucky.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, woo, wow, I feel special. Delayne, how about you?

DELAYNE : I always feel special.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Well, you are so special.

DELAYNE : My grandmother said that I’m special, so, it must be true.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. Yes. I would say grandmothers are excellent assessors of character. In general, in general. So, Elle, I got to ask you the question I ask everybody: how did you get into fanfiction?

ELLE : Well, like many fans of _Wynonna Earp_ , I was a very closeted gay teenager, who was so closeted that I was pretty much telling people that I was not gay. But I read a massive amount of gay fanfiction. Like, just, that’s all I read, except I was straight, apparently. And so, I used to write fanfiction just for myself, like I would just keep it on my hard drive, and re-read it, and be like, “I’m straight, but I can’t stop writing about gay ladies.”

And then when _Carmilla_ came out I really loved _Carmilla_ , it was a lot of fun, and around Season Two there was sort of, like, these plotlines that I was a little, kind of, I had questions about them, and I wanted to do something with them, so some of my friends were like, “Dude, just write something.” So I wrote it, I sent it to them, they said stick it up on AO3, and I did. And people seemed to like that, and then it was like a combination of ego, and then being able to practice writing.

And then when _Wynonna_ came out, it was just like this natural – I just love writing these characters. So, it was sort of, a very, like, slow process of writing and putting my own stuff online, but once _Wynonna_ hit I was like, “This is too much fun, I just want to write this all time.” Emily Andras, please hire me, please.

DARKWICCAN : I don’t think she listens to this show, I’ll be honest with you.

ELLE : I agree with you, but like in my mind, like, maybe she felt me through the force. I don’t know, but, y'know.

DELAYNE : There’s nothing wrong with putting it out there in the universe.

ELLE : That’s right! Floating to Calgary.

DELAYNE : It needs to be out there. Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : That’s right, yeah. And you can always tweet at her, too, she’s pretty active.

DELAYNE : [laughter] She really is. Yep.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : And a good one.

DARKWICCAN : SO, okay, so you started writing fanfiction for yourself, after reading avidly, and then you got around reading and writing _Carmilla_ fic, and then of course slippery slope to _Wynonna Earp_ from there. The reason why I regurgitated that all back at you is because I wonder at what point in that process did you finally figure yourself out, if I may ask, and come out?

ELLE : That’s a really great question. I am very much a late bloomer, I came out quite late, but I sort of experienced, like, all the gay lady milestones within a week. [laughter] So I was like a little baby gay, I felt like I was a baby for like – my thing is like, coming out, it’s never just about coming out once, right?

So, like, my thing was like I need to come out to my parents, and my friends all knew, and so it’s just when I came out to my parents I had like a week of like, “Now I can wear flannel freely!”

And so, like, but after that week I just sort of like morphed into like an old lady gay? [laughter] And so – so like, I think, I remember watching _Carmilla_ , and watching the end of the first season, and watching that sort of, really – like now that I look at it, I’m like, this is so, like, I mean, it’s adorable, but it’s on a single camera, probably filmed down the street from me, in Toronto.

And I was like, I just remember watching Carmilla and Laura, and thinking, like, you know what? Screw it. Like, this is what I want, I’m tired of not talking about it. And so, I feel like I probably started publishing fanfiction within like the next six months or so after that. So, yeah, so it was all part of the fun process.

DARKWICCAN : So, you could just no longer be contained.

DELAYNE : I’m just so happy to not be the only late bloomer on here at the moment. It’s just so nice.

ELLE : You know what? Like, this society is crazy, and basically, you know, we all go through our own sort of journeys and stuff like that, and I just came out on the other side, sort of, like, as a friend once said, she’s like, “You radiate the gay.” And I was like, “I know.” So, that’s sort of, y'know, how it happened. Now it continues.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. I tease Delayne constantly about being a late bloomer, but, you know what, though, it’s not – would you say you were oblivious? Because that’s Delayne’s thing.

ELLE : Okay, so here’s the thing with me. My younger sister, who is just an absolute saint of a human being, she told me I was gay ten years before I was cool with sort of being like, “Oh yeah, I am.”

So, it was sort of on my radar, but I had this very strange, sort of mental thing, where I thought to myself, “I wish I was gay, because that looks really fun, and I really like when ladies kiss each other, and I wish I could do that, but it’s too bad, because I’m not.” And then, you know, the games we play with each other.

But, no, once I like decided, it was on like _Donkey Kong_. I was, like, screw it. I’m just rainbows, and ladies, and, y'know, I mean everyone’s going to do it when they want to do it, like there’s no right or wrong time to come out. So, no shame, late bloomer.

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely true. Absolutely true. So, [laughter] yeah. So, in addition to being a late bloomer gay, and a fanfic author, you also have another claim to fame within the _Wynonna Earp_ community, which is –

ELLE : That is true. Yep.

DARKWICCAN : - pretty awesome. So, care to share?

ELLE : Yeah, so I named Nicole’s cat Calamity Jane.

DARKWICCAN : Oh my god! That’s so amazing! Okay, story time. What happened?

ELLE : I just, I will be doing autographs at EH Con. I’ll have to charge, because obviously, y'know, naming cats isn’t that lucrative.

But, I guess what – like, part of the reason I love _Wynonna Earp_ is because I do love that Western genre, and it has sort of personal meaning for me and my family, and so I, y'know, I love these sort of, legendary figures, people like Annie Oakley, and like, Wild Bill.

And at some point I was on Twitter, and I think it was – I guess it was in Season One – they sort of mention that Nicole had a cat. And I think I tweeted to Emily, “Until Emily Andras tells me differently, Nicole’s cat’s name is Calamity Jane”. And she tweeted back, and she was like, “Okay.” And was as simple as that, it was like, oh, um.

And then, y'know, I think other people started tweeting things, like sort of plays on that name, so I was like, it’s never going to happen, because it’s like that Twitter thing, where, y'know, Emily basically can like burp on Twitter and then like five hundred people respond.

And then, in Season Two, like there was this cat, and they were calling it Calamity Jane, and I was like “Uh-uh what?!” Y'know? I’m calling my lawyer – like, no, I don’t actually have a lawyer. Like that would be real adulating, and I can’t do that.

But yeah, so the cat Calamity Jane was named by me. After one of my like, kind of, favorite Western icons, so.

DELAYNE : That’s just the best story ever.

ELLE : That’s like, they’re crazy.

DARKWICCAN : And you have the receipt, yeah.

ELLE : And I got to meet Emily at Fan Expo, I guess it was two years ago now, and say like, “Hey, I named the cat.” And she’s like, “Oh, that’s you!” You know, she like wrote on a comic book for me, like, “I love Calamity Jane.”

And the whole thing’s just bizarre and crazy, but I think that’s one of the unique things about this fandom, is that sort of happens, things like that. So that’s been nice. It’s fun.

DARKWICCAN : It’s awesome. That’s one thing that I absolutely love – this is the most unique, and embracing, and amazing fandom I’ve ever been a part of in my life.

ELLE : Yeah, like I mean, I have to admit I’m sort of – I’m a bit of a lone shark, in that I love fandom, but it’s more of like an anthropological fascination. So sometimes I sort of of sit on the outside, like watching in. But it is nice to, y'know, have these moments where it sort of feels like, “Oh, I contributed to this thing I love.” And that’s weird, but wonderful as well.

DARKWICCAN : So, speaking of _Wynonna Earp_ , and your contributions to _Wynonna Earp_ , let’s talk about your fic, the – I always want to say “the”, it’s not “the”, it’s just In Between - your fic, In Between. Which takes place after the birth of Alice Michelle, kind of that night after she’s been born and sent - and Waverly and Nicole help to get her sent away to safety.

You know, it’s interesting, in that it’s such a serious fic that I expected you to be more serious. But I’m so – I love the fact that you’re just as whacky as Delaynbe and I.

ELLE : Y'know, It’s been dark and twisty inside, I just like spew it into writing, y'know, my own life, I’m sort of this goofball Canadian that just falls over a lot, but I got to save the dark for writing.

DELAYNE : So, in that first scene, you have Nicole, she sees Wynonna, and Doc, and Dolls, and she feels like she’s intruding on something that she doesn’t understand. Honestly, I’m not sure I understand either, so I was wondering if you do, and could maybe explain it to me?

ELLE : Yeah, one of the things I’m really interested in, in both sort of my life, and also in my writing life, is the idea of trauma, and how trauma, sort of, trauma has the ability to bind, but also to break people away from each other.

And so, I feel like in Wynonna Earp, it’s miraculous in that it actually has me hoping for a heterosexual love triangle, which is confusing for me, because usually I’m like that’s when I go get snacks. But I feel like, so, Doc and Wynonna have a baby together which, y'know, I mean, like even if they hated each other’s guts, like they still have this connection, in this baby. So, they’ve had a baby and they’ve lost a baby, and so there’s that binding together. But the show very much doesn’t seem to be saying, “Well, just because they had a baby, that means that whatever’s happening between Wynonna and Dolls is no longer there.” And so, it very much feels like the three of them are in this bubble together, none of them are quite sure like how it all fits together, and we’re sort of left at the end of Season Two with, like, well, y'know, what’s going to happen to these three people, they’ve just been through this very intense moment.

And I feel like Nicole’s always a little bit on the outside. And so, in that moment, when she’s coming in, I really wanted to make it clear that while she can sort of understand her part in this whole thing, she can’t understand what it feels like to have given birth, and to have lost the child, and to be in love with someone that might be in love with you, but she’s with someone else. And so, she’s sort of, y'know, is family, but in this moment like the family’s changed, the dynamic has changed, and she’s acutely aware of it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that’s kind of, that’s actually kind of what I got from it, but I was interested to hear what you were going to say. I’m glad to know that I was sort of getting what you were – picking up what you were putting down.

ELLE : Good!

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. ‘Cause it did seem like that sort of, like, I’m peering in on a private moment that I shouldn’t be a part of, as these –

ELLE : Yes. Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - three people, sort of, deal with this situation.

ELLE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And speaking to that sort of, just the overall feeling of the fic itself, you manage to really capture that sort of - what I was calling in our first segment, when we were talking about it – I call it that sort of grey space, right, that exists in the aftermath of loss, or trauma.

And I was wondering, what elements did you feel where the most important to focus on in creating this sensation?

ELLE : Yeah, it’s a good question, because, as I said before, I am very fascinated by trauma, and grief, and I sort of, writing this fic, I don’t think I really realized until after I had done it, and I sort of re-read it, that what I was sort of creating were these sort of bubbles of characters together, this sort of, like, safe space for them, this sort  of womb space.

I wanted – I obviously wanted to mention that Wynonna, and Doc, and Dolls were there, because I think sometimes the challenge of writing Wayhaught is being, like, “Oh, there’s other people.” You can’t just – it can’t just always be them. But then I wanted them to also, like, they share this moment, they were the ones that sort of carried the baby to safety, so they have that moment together.

So it was important to me to, sort of, create these moments of very intense, sort of, interior spaces. So, that’s why first there’s Wynonna’s bedroom, then there’s the bathroom, then there’s Waverly’s bedroom. Like, these very – these spaces that we don’t necessarily share in public, but that’s where everybody is during this moment in time.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : That’s great. That’s storytelling, right there. That’s excellent, excellent.

ELLE : Thanks.

DELAYNE : Yeah, so the bubble in the bathroom, then. Waverly seems surprised that Nicole did not shed her clothing when she joined her in the bath and, as a writer, I’ve – andI know DW has experienced this too – sometimes, when we’re writing, characters do things that we did not intend to. So, I’m wondering, was this a surprise to you too, or was it something that you had planned?

ELLE : You know, I think the whole fic was actually built around this image of Nicole getting into the bath with her clothes on. I remember in Season One Emily Andras talking about that scene where Waverly comes down the stairs and Nicole looks at her, and how it’s this very cliché scene, but it’s only cliché because we’ve seen it so often between heterosexual couples, and to give this moment to a gay couple, a queer couple, makes it unique, and makes it new.

And so, I like this idea of taking this cliché of, like, y'know, the sort of romantic sleeping moment of someone jumping into the tub fully clothed, but we’re giving it two queer women, and I think that’s appealed to me.

And it just felt like something Nicole would do. She’s a bit of the romantic character, I find, in the show. You know, when Wynonna said she’s like a Hallmark card, and there is that aspect of her. She’s a bit knight in shinining armour, if that knight in shining armour was always falling over, and getting a concussion, which is why – of all the character, I’m like Nicole, you and me, like, I feel you. Because I’m also always falling over, and I sometimes write sonnets for my girlfriend, but whatever, gross.

But I do feel like Nicole would do that, and also I just like the idea of taking something that maybe once belonged to, sort of, heterosexual romance, and being like, “Sorry, I’m going to put my gay hands all over it.”

DELAYNE : That is fantastic. I love that.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Yes. And speaking to the idea of Nicole being a romantic and a knight in shining armor, clumsiness notwithstanding, I love how your Nicole makes herself into whatever Waverly needs in that moment.

But what I think is really interesting, at least in my takeaway from reading In Between, is that although Nicole intentions are genuine, in wanting to be there and support Waverly, be whatever Waverly needs, it feels like it’s coming less from a place of altruism, and kind of more from Nicole being almost numb from the barrage of insanity the last few days.

‘Cause I mean, I did a timeline with Laragh shortly after the end of Season Two, we’re trying to figure out, hey, how much time actually has passed. And we discovered that the last three episodes take place across one and a half days.

ELLE : My god, these poor people.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, exactly.

ELLE : Give them a chance to have a sandwich and take a shower.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, so basically, to me, in reading In Between, it felt like even though Nicole was doing everything right that she could for Waverly, it was because she didn’t know what to feel herself. So, I’m wondering, was this an intention choice that you made going in, or did it take shape as you were writing the story out?

ELLE : Y'know, this story sort of, like, there’s two parts, and the part in the bathroom is very clear to me, I was like, well, Nicole’s going to jump in the tub fully clothed and they’re going to cry, and talk and then I got them into the bedroom, which is always a little bit of a, y'know, it’s like, “Okay, so now we’re in the bedroom, so like what are they going to do in here, if anything.”

And I, y'know, I do write – I don’t really like calling it smut, ‘cause I do feel like there’s different varities of what we write, and I put a lot of time, and effort, and stress into writing, sort of, what you’d call a love scene, and it just felt wrong to me that they’d sort of have this like sweeping romantic, like, “I’m so in love with you,” affirming sort of sex with each other at this point. ‘Cause as you said, like, they’re both very shell-shocked.

But I did want to focus on the idea of intimacy, and I did want to focus on the idea that when you’re in a relationship you’re partner becomes certain things to you. And so, Nicole’s job as Waverly’s partner is, yes, to be with her, and take care of her, and as her sexual partner, to, y'know, meet her needs should Nicole also choose to wish to do that. And it just felt like in that moment, like Nicole sort of had this awareness of like, well, this is my job, and of course she wants to do this for Waverly, this show is very much about consent, and that’s something really important to me in writing my fanfic. But it did feel like this moment of Nicole’s like, “I’m here for you, to do with as you want, because I want to be here for you.”

And it was also really important to me that Waverly did not reciprocate. There’s that moment where Waverly sort of says, “Do you also want?” And Nicole says, “No, I’m too cold.”

And I think sometimes when we write this romance, we get caught up in like, “Oh, everyone’s, y'know, always wants sex, and always wants all these things,” and sometimes the actual feelings are lost. And so, I wanted this moment for the two of them, of Nicole kind of being like, “Take what you need from me, this is why I’m here, this is how I will show you my love today, because this is what I want to do. But on the other hand, I don’t feel like I need to do something that I don’t want to do.”

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and it comes back to that question of consent, right? Which is a huge deal within the fandom, but it’s also a huge deal within the show, because thankfully Emily has made it so. And, yeah, just because one partner needs to receive, doesn’t mean that – and the other partner’s willing to give – it doesn’t mean that the other partner also wants or needs to receive.

ELLE : Yeah, I mean, I think there’s realism in that too. As I said, writing these characters, Nicole’s very romantic. So it’s very tempting to sort of have her doing these sweeping monologues, and sort of constantly wanting to run into, y'know, rescue things. But there’s no romancing away, sort of, like, a lost baby.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Yeah.

ELLE : My god, y'know?

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely fair point there, fair point there.

DELAYNE : Hey, Elle.

ELLE : What’s up?

DELAYNE : [laughter] So, out of the sixteen fics that you have authored so far, only one is a multi-chapter. Do you have a preference for those shorter fics?

ELLE : So, my – it’s not so much a preference as, like, an intense sense of guilt in that, I mean, y'know, as a fanfic reader there’s sort of nothing worse than you’re like really into a fic, and it’s great, and then either the author can’t update, or it just doesn’t end, like they never come back to it. And I’m just so acutely aware of that really, like my greatest nightmare is to sort of start a multi-fic and then not be able to finish it, and then I’ve got – like, I couldn’t live with it, like it would just drive me insane.

So I like one-shots because it means I can get stuff out to people, and hopefully they like it, and then I don’t have to feel guilty about not finishing. And I also feel like when I’m writing _Wynonna Earp_ fanfic, especially, like it’s so episodic that usually all I want to write about is this one moment from an episode, or something. So it’s not really conducive to multi-fic.

I do have a multiple part fic that’s sort of – it is _Wynonna Earp_ , and it is AU, and I sort of add to it once in a while, but even that, like it bothers me that I haven’t added to it in a year, or something.

But yeah, I think just in terms of where my life is, in terms of how busy I am and how crazy things are, the one fic wonders sort of, it helps me maintain my sanity.

DELAYNE : That is fantastic. And I totally feel you there. [laughter] I have abandonment issues.

ELLE : Oh, I can’t, I can’t do it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Absolutely, I’ve spoken about it before on the show, where I will not post something, even if it is a multi-part piece, until it is entirely finished. And then I have a posting schedule I can stick to, ‘cause it’s already done. [laughter] But –

ELLE : That’s good, like I am just not that disciplined as a writer, so it would just be a mess. But no, I like my little one-shots.

DELAYNE : Nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with people who –

DARKWICCAN : Nothing wrong with it at all.

DELAYNE : - post the multi-chapters and, y'know, life gets in the way and they never get to finish. We don’t want to make anyone feel guilty!

DARKWICCAN : Oh, girl, let me what. I have got a Willow/Tara fic in existence – it’s not on the Kittenboard, I’ve got on a separate site, I’m not going to tell anybody what it is, or where it is – I will just say I left poor Tara in labor. She’s still in labor. It’s been more than a year.

[laughter]

ELLE : That’s like, I was planning to write this like, big multi-chapter Clexa fic and just couldn’t do it. Like, I got three chapters in, left them at sort of a happy place, and then I was like, it destroyed my love. Like, I just can’t go on, right? I think about it all the time, because I had like all this story planned, but I just – I was too devastated, like, I just couldn’t go on.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Okay.

DELAYNE : We are kindred spirits, I think.

DARKWICCAN : I feel – yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, back to In Between, sort of. So, In Between feels like it’s the final piece in a series – you can correct me if I’m wrong about that – but it feels like it’s the final piece in a series that sort of is exploring the notion of quiet time for Waverly and Nicole. What gave you the idea to create these missing scenes?

ELLE : You know, it’s funny, because I feel like it is the final piece of my Season Two stuff, and as soon as Season Three starts, like I’m sure my brain’ll start going again with it. But _Wynonna Earp_ is the time of show that moves so quickly and it eats plot really fast, and that’s actually something I love about the show. I grew up watching soap operas and so I understand the slow burn, it’s like six months, and someone has a secret, and they still have a secret and it’s six months later.

But I hate that, and I love that Wynonna Earp, like, if someone has a secret it lasts for like, y'know, a commercial break. And I like – [laughter] like I love that, it’s like yes, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.

But I think because of that, there’s not necessarily time for the characters to sort take a breath, and take a break. We got that great scene with Wynonna, sort of, mourning the baby, and I loved that, and those are sort of rare moments, and that’s fine.

But when I’m writing I find often my head – like, I love sleeping, and so my head’s always like, “What if I just made them nap? Like, what if that’s –“ Like, I realize [laughter] so many of my fanfics, like, they all end the same, with people sleeping, and that’s partially ‘cause I love sleeping, but I think it’s also sleeping with someone, not just sex, but the physical act of sleeping next to someone is incredibly intimate, and incredibly vulnerable, and it’s part of a relationship that’s important to me.

And it’s something that you’re just not going to see that on-screen. Like, there’s no way they’re going to be like, “Let’s take a minute just to, like, have Waverly and Nicole take a nap.” [laughter] It’s not going to happen, understandably so.

And so, I find when I’m writing, I come back again and again to this idea of, like, let’s get these characters in pajamas, and under the blanket, and just like sharing – like it’s so gay, right?

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, we did wake you from a nap for this interview, so.

ELLE : Yeah, you woke me from a nap for this interview. Like, the –

DELAYNE : We’ve come full circle now.

ELLE : - the most romantic thing, like, I’ll ever say to my girlfriend is like, “Hey, babe, let’s take a nap.” It’s like, “Yes!” It’s like, we’re both super into napping, like, it’s awesome. But I do think there is something just like very sort of precious and unique – like, when you’re in a relationship with someone and you’re comfortable enough to be like, “Hey, I’m going to fall asleep next to, I’m like dead to the world, and you’re right beside me, and I’m trusting you with my, y'know, like dead body.” I mean, that’s romance, guys.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : I get so excited, it’s very rare when my wife wants to nap. Man, it is the best thing in the world.

ELLE : It’s the best! Can you be like, I love naps, also like it’s fun to, y'know, have someone to like squish next to, and y'know, I just want to give Nicole and Waverly that squish time. [laughter] Like, euphemism or not.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, well –

DELAYNE : Squish time, that’s my new favorite phrase.

DARKWICCAN : Your next one-shot, Elle, should feature Waverly and Nicole taking a nap, and it should be titled Squish Time, I think.

ELLE : The Squish Time. Yeah, y'know, I just like that deep, deep squish time.

DARKWICCAN : Yep. [laughter] Oh, man. [laughter] Oh, geez. Well, we don’t want to keep you from your nap any longer, so –

ELLE : Guys, it’s good, I’m up now.

DARKWICCAN : Okay. [laughter] Well, we do have one more question for you. And it’s a question that we ask all of our authors. Yes, so brace yourself. Delayne?

DELAYNE : Alright. You are stranded on a desert island, and can have only one fanfic to read. What is it?

ELLE : One of mine, or someone else’s?

DELAYNE : Whatever you want, you’re on the desert island.

DARKWICCAN : Whatever you want, yeah.

ELLE : But, like, how full of myself would I be, if like I only wanted to read my own work.

DARKWICCAN : Well, just remember, you are stranded on a desert island, and, y'know, brevity may not be what you’re looking for.

ELLE : The truth is, if I was stranded on a desert island I’d be dead in ten seconds, because like, I just fall, like, I just fall over a lot. But there is a fic, there’s a Clexa fic that’s called make this leap say geronimo, by adventurousfeather. Which, I don’t know what an adventurous feather is, but it sounds great.

But it’s really domestic, like, Lexa and Clarke they like, raise a kid together, and I’m just such a sucker for that kind of thing. Like, just give me like happy gay ladies, taking naps, raising babies, just – like, that’s all I want to see in the world. And so I think – like, I remember when I read that fic, like it just made me so happy inside, just this like, so, so – I have a lot of Clexa feelings, like I’m sure many of us do.

There’s a reason that my multi-chapter Wayhaught fic is, like, they have babies, ‘cause I just have this thing. So I think it would be that one, just ‘cause I like reading about those characters happy, and just like raising kids, and like painting each other’s faces in war paint and, like, y'know, swords and stuff. Like, that’s my jam, so. Domestic sword warriors, I think. Y'know, that kind of thing.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome. So what was the title of that again?

ELLE : The title of that was – let me look it up, ‘cause I wrote it down - called make this leap say geronimo, by adventurousfeather.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome.

ELLE : It’s an older fic, but, y'know, I sort of come back to it.

DARKWICCAN : Oldies but goodies, man, they are our security blankets for which to nap with.

ELLE : They never die, in fanfics, they just live on, they live forever.

DARKWICCAN : Well, we will provide a link to that fic in our show notes, so that everybody else can check it out too.

ELLE : Yay, very good. It’s well written, it’s got a really interesting style, so that’s always fun too.

DARKWICCAN : Well, we will be sure to check it out, thank you so much for that recommendation. And thank you for coming on and chatting with us today!

ELLE : Thanks guys, it’s been an honor.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that’s all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for tuning in. Big thanks to Elle, aka Wrackwonder, for joining to discuss her fic In Between. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro and the [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM].

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Zydeco Boogaloo by Loco Zydeco; Climbing Further Up the Ginso Tree by Gareth Coker; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Maddigan

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast.  And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast
> 
> We're also on iTunes!


	9. Beware the Jaws That Bite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week DW and Delayne tackle the horror-comedy AU 'Get Lost' and spend a delightful second-half of the show chatting with author Sensitive Pigeon and her beta Ms.Fire!

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/beware-the-jaws-that-bite)

ORIGINAL AIR DATE: MAR 12, 2018

 

Read the Fic!

[Get Lost](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7824859) by Sensitive Pigeon

 

 

Pigeon's Desert Island Fic: [In Fate's Hands](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8153071) by skillzyo

Ms.Fire's Desert Island Fic: [Swanhood and the Evil Queen](http://archiveofourown.org/series/209045) by coalitiongirl (OUAT Fandom)

 

Transcript for the Deaf and HOH by Flying Fanatic and Climb! 

 

EFA EPISODE 09 – BEWARE THE JAWS THAT BITE

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody and welcome to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host DarkWiccan and with me is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we are super excited this week, because we’re going to be talking about, I think, one of the most well-written pieces of _Wynonna Earp_ , Wayhaught fanfiction currently out there. I don’t know, what do you think, Delayne?

DELAYNE : It is so well written, it has affected me, just a little bit, but we’ll get into that.

DARKWICCAN : We will, we will. It’s one of those works that could easily have the names changed and be published, once it’s complete. It’s currently incomplete, but it is really a fantastic – it’s one of those, y'know, there was a thing on Tumblr the other day that said, “reblog this if you have read fanfiction better than most novels,” and I was just like, “Reblog! Insta reblog.”

DELAYNE : And that was the image, that you went right to this fic?

DARKWICCAN : Yes, went right to this fic. And this fic, the fic in question is Get Lost by sensitivepigeon. Yeah! [laughter] So, for those of you who aren’t familiar with this work yet –

DELAYNE : [laughter] Very good, just put that in there, yes.

DARKWICCAN : Thank you. Yet. Get Lost is this sort of psychological thriller-comedy.

DELAYNE : “Absurdist horror” is one of the tags, and I think that’s a good descriptive tag, absurdist horror.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, absolutely absurdist. Y'know, I’ve said before that sensitivepigeon’s writing style reminds me of, y'know, if Carl Hiaasen and Douglas Adams had a love child, it would be sensitivepigeon’s writing style. It’s so smart, and funny, and fast-paced, but just so - oh, god, I don’t know what the word is I’m looking for here – it’s like it draws you in, and it carries you along for the ride, and it is the most fantastic, and fun, and occasionally freaky, freaky ride to be on.

DELAYNE : Yeah. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : So, the premise of Get Lost is that Waverly goes – she’s a photographer – and she goes up into a wooded area to take some nature photography, and suddenly finds herself in a scenario where she thinks she’s going to help another hiker in distress, and finds herself living in an actual – oh, what’s the word I’m looking for – folklore! She finds herself existing –

DELAYNE : Yes!

DARKWICCAN : - in a folklorian [ph] thriller. [laughter] Alongside –

DELAYNE : We need to make that a thing: folklorian thriller.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, right? Yeah. Alongside of the stranger who rescues her from near death. The stranger who turns out to be Nicole Haught, Search and Rescue.

DELAYNE : Nicole Haught, Search and Rescue.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : I love that it’s repeated often: Nicole Haught, Search and Rescue. That is something that keeps her going, I guess.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah it’s –

DELAYNE : I’m getting ahead of myself, sorry.

DARKWICCAN : No, it’s okay, yeah. Whenever Nicole starts to feel herself slipping from reality, she will try to center herself by reminding herself of her identity, to herself, which is Nicole Haught, Search and Rescue.

So, essentially the first, what, third of the story is Nicole and Waverly sort of lost in the woods. Which is a bit ironic because Nicole Haught is a trained Search and Rescue responder. But they’re sort of lost in the woods, and they’re trying to escape this deadly creature from folklore that they keep attempting to sort of identify, and Waverly has an idea of what she thinks it is, and at one point uses a tactic from folklore to try to defeat it, and apparently succeeds, question mark.

But really a lot of it is the whole being lost in the woods. I mean, there’s something just sort of – it’s not just like – okay, it’s one thing to go for a walk in the woods, on a path, you know where you are. And even if you go off path a little bit, y'know, you’re still orientated to where you are, how to get back to where you came from. But the idea of being lost in the woods, where you just can’t find your way back to where you need to be, that’s got to be – I mean, I’ve never personally experienced it, but Delayne, I think -  I recall you telling me at one point that you have?

DELAYNE : I have, and we had a map and a GPS unit, and I was working with an idiot who happened – I happened to know him, he was in the same classes with my wife, and he was in her maps class, and I believe he barely passed. But he was the person who worked for the forest service and I was a subcontractor, so I was sort of defaulting to him, and he got us lost up on the mountain for two nights, away from base camp, as we were trying to go spray weeds. And, yeah, we had to camp just out in the open, with a small fire, and I luckily had, in my preparedness, had brought enough snacks and other stuff to sustain us while we were away from camp for two nights. And it was a little rough.

DARKWICCAN : So, you say you were out there to spray weeds. Was this an effort to keep out a [sic] invasive species that was creeping into the park, or what was…?

DELAYNE : Yeah, we were actually in the Frank Church wilderness, so it is closed off to motorized. They flew us in with all of our equipment and, yeah, we were walking to where these – it’s severe noxious, invasive weeds had a good-sized population, and we were trying to knock ‘em back.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so this guy gets you lost in what is essentially supposed to be his territory, ‘cause he’s the park – the representative of the forestry service there.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So he gets lost in his own backyard. What was that, like, second night for you? I’m sure the first night was pretty bad, but by the second night of not being back to base camp, I’m curious, like, what was going through your head?

DELAYNE : Oh, I was pissed. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Gonna murder him and –

DELAYNE : I was, I was -

DARKWICCAN : - take the GPS unit? [laughter]

DELAYNE : Well, actually, that first night I took the map from him, and the GPS unit, I got our coordinates, pulled open the map and actually looked to where we were and I said, “If we take that path, we will end up at Taylor Ranch”, which probably would have been better, we would have gotten home quicker, but we still needed to spray the weeds, we weren’t even to the weeds yet. And uh –

DARKWICCAN : Jeez...[coughing laugh]

DELAYNE : So, yeah, I – and then it seemed like, based on the maps, we could just cut across - and this time we were without a trail, we were not on a trail - we could sort of cut across the mountain and get to the other one that we had to spray. And it did not go quickly and we were without water.

He tried to tell me there wouldn’t be any huckleberries, and I noticed from the signs, yes, the birds look like they have some huckleberries, and we found some huckleberries. Oh, I was so excited.

DARKWICCAN : Wow, so it was just a – truly a hot mess.

DELAYNE : Yes, and my wife was super worried, ‘cause she just knew that that moron was going to get us into trouble. ‘Cause she was actually hired to come along with us, but medical reasons, was not able to join.

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha. So, okay, so you went through this slightly traumatic, extremely frustrating, occasionally scary scenario where you were lost in the woods. How was it for you, reading this story where the first third of the story is that – almost that exact scenario – luckily, in reality, you were not chased by a creature of folklore. So, y'know, thank goodness for small favours.

DELAYNE : Yes, and the bears seemed to be higher up, or something, too, so we’re –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, good.

DELAYNE : Luckily there’s no bears, either.

DARKWICCAN : Bears, man. I – my wife and went to Woodland Park Zoo for her birthday, in January, and they have a grizzly bear at – or is it a grizzly bear? No, it’s not a grizzly bear. It’s another kind of bear. But, it’s just massive. It’s one of those things where like –

DELAYNE : Kodiak, perhaps?

DARKWICCAN : Perhaps, I don’t know off the top of my head. It was fricking giant, it was huge. And it’s one of those things where, before you actually see a bear you might think to yourself, “Well, if I were to come across a bear on a trail, I’d just be cool about it, y'know, and I’d just casually remove myself from the situation, or whatever, I wouldn’t startle the bear, y'know, I’d just kind of –“

Let me tell you, you come across an actual bear, you’re crapping yourself. There is no other option, you will crap yourself, possibly pee, and then, maybe, waddle away, with no dignity left. If the bear lets you get that far. [laughter]

DELAYNE : I’ve been lucky, and we’ve seen bears further off, and we’ll be like, “Let’s try another area, and we’ll come back around.

DARKWICCAN : I never appreciated how big bears could get till I saw that bear. Okay, so anyway, I interrupted your story, so reading about these characters being lost in the woods, how was that for you?

DELAYNE : The first chapter actually was okay, but when we got to the second chapter, where it’s focused on Nicole, and as she’s dizzily wandering through the forest, I actually got dizzy and had to lie down and take a five hour nap.

DARKWICCAN : What? Wow. Wow…and that was entirely due to the reading experience and not because maybe you hadn’t been sleeping enough?

DELAYNE : [laughter] Maybe a little of both, but it was more to the reading that someone might think, because it’s so well-written, it made me dizzy.

DARKWICCAN : Wow, well, I…I…

DELAYNE : That’s how I see it.

DARKWICCAN : Uh, so I guess that could stand as a warning to potential readers that this story is so well-written that you might find yourself actually experiencing the sensations that the characters are described as experiencing.

DELAYNE : Uh, yeah, and as Nicole started to lose it a little bit, and was giving a tour guide to her invisible classroom…

DARKWICCAN : That was hilarious. That was hilarious. Oh my gosh.

DELAYNE : So that was the one thing that was able to keep me going in this story. I definitely read it a lot slower, and as slow as I read anyway, but the humor that is snuck in there - it’s actually not even snuck in there - it’s so well placed, just perfectly in this story, it was able to keep me going. Because walking around and pointing at a plant “That’s a plant.” And I love that line because I have used that line.

DARKWICCAN : You must get bugged a lot, because you’re a botanist. Like, “hey, Delayne, what’s that plant?”

DELAYNE : Yes, that’s a plant.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : You’re not the wikipedia for plant life.

DELAYNE : And if i’m out of my zone too -  I spend most of my plant identification time in the sagebrush steppe, and so when I’m sorta in that the ecotown of the dry air [ph] forest, that’s where I’ll still know my plants. But once I get deep into the forest, yes I took Dendrology [ph], ,I struggled with that class because I was sick a lot that year, but ya know, it’s nuts, you learn, you have to practice, these plants a little more.

DARKWICCAN : It’s any learned skill; you have to practice regularly to keep it up. But touching on what you mentioned, the humor, the humor in the story. Pigeon is just, I’ve said it before, she’s a genius, she’s an absolute genius. The way she weaves the humor throughout this otherwise pretty-dark storyline is just, it’s artisanal. It is artisanal humor. That’s the best way I can describe it. It’s kinda why I keep coming back to the whole thing, she reminds me of Carl Hiaasen and Douglas Adams because that same sorta…she’s sorta describing this terrifying, horrible, awful thing, but she’s doing it in such a flippant way, that it provides just enough of a buffer, where you get the scene, you get what’s happening, you understand the stakes, but at the same time, you’re not dragged under by it, because you have this buffer of humor that sorta keeps you separate from what is happening. Except when it makes you dizzy and you have to take a five hour nap.

DELAYNE : The dizziness occurred before the humor, so I hadn’t quite gotten to the humor to break that up yet. It hit me that hard and that quick.

DARKWICCAN : Really? I feel like there was humor from the start.

DELAYNE : Well, no, I mean…

DARKWICCAN : The opening line is “The day had been going well up until the point where Waverly had committed a felony.”

DELAYNE : [laughter] Okay, I guess I did not describe that well enough. At that very moment when Nicole was dizzy, before she started giving her tour to the invisible class, I couldn’t make it - if I had made it sooner to the tour maybe…

DARKWICCAN : Just three sentences further, you would’ve been fine.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Maybe not, who knows? I was dizzy so, I don’t know, I just needed a nap.

DARKWICCAN : Another thing that sensitivepigeon does really well is she draws on iconic imagery to really give you sort of vivid experience of what’s going on in her stories. And a lot of times that imagery, while completely fresh and new - it’s familiar - it takes you to other pieces of media that you may have experienced previously. Again, the way that she’s writing, it’s all new. It is fresh, but she’s pulling from familiar imagery, so again, it just draws you that much more into this world that’s she’s creating for you.

DELAYNE : Actually, one of my favorite dialogues is between Waverly and Doc, and where they’re like “plus squared double two-point-oh”. It reminded me of Waverly and Jeremy in canon when they’re trying to figure out the language of the seal - so even - not just humor from outside sources, familiarity of outside sources, but even the humor within the tv show itself.

DARKWICCAN : Right. But I was actually thinking of something you and I were talking about before we started recording and that was there was this scene about midway through, where they’re no longer in the woods, they’re at a government facility. I don’t wanna give away too much, but everybody was asleep, right?

DELAYNE : Yes

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and was it, you said it reminded you of something in _Firefly_?

DELAYNE : Well, _Serenity_ , the movie, when they’re on Miranda and everyone’s like, they all just went to sleep and you’re like…ahh…

DARKWICCAN : That is just such an eerie image and again that’s kinda what I’m talking about where again this description is completely unique to the story it exists in, but you’re able to pull sorta relatable imagery from your mind, and it just makes that whole scene so much more.

 

DELAYNE : Yeah, that’s exactly what I pictured, everyone just kinda laid down and went to sleep.  And it gave it that very creepy vibe, in having that other reference from Serenity.

DARKWICCAN : So, I have a favorite character in this, in this story, that doesn’t have any lines of dialogue. He just sorta was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and unwittingly became, essentially, a zombie, and that is the character of Levi. And, the reason why I love this character so much is all because of Pigeon’s description of him. It is entirely down to her description of him because if you watch the show _Wynonna Earp_ , and I’m assuming you do if you read _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction,  you can recognize the character of Levi, and I just picture this actor who plays Levi in the show, perfectly in this new iteration of the character where like…you know the movie _Weekend At Bernie_ ’s?

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So, in _Weekend at Bernie’s_ , Bernie is dead. Spoiler alert. and his two friends? Question mark -

DELAYNE : That was a long time ago.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, they have to disguise the fact that he’s dead. I’m not gonna give you the whole rundown of the plot of _Weekend At Bernie’s_. You can watch, I’m sure, on Netflix or Amazon Prime or whatever, but essentially they have to kinda carry him around. So the actor who played Bernie actually had to be dead weight for these two actors to basically manipulate him, and flop him around, and you know…

Now Levi, in this story of Get Lost, is undead, but I kinda picture him moving around the way those two guys in that movie moved Bernie around - but without - but like Bernie is just doing it himself. So just very sorta loose, loose-armed, kinda jaw-agape, just a stupid “argh” look on his face, as he sorta bobbles around, trying to get…

DELAYNE : Shuffles…

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, he shuffles, but I just sorta picture his head sorta bobbling on his neck, ya know? Trying to get around. And I love the fact, that as he’s trying to get from Point A to his final destination, which is sorta ingrained in him based - he’s essentially being called by the Beast that created him, right? So he’s trying to get from where he was left to the Beast’s current location, and he has to go through a major urban area to get there. And I love the fact that he’s going through this urban area and everyone just thinks he has the world’s greatest zombie makeup, ya know? Like taking pictures with him, posting selfies to Instagram, putting stickers on him. And no one…I just love this idea of this poor guy just shuffling aimlessly - well not aimlessly, he knows where he’s going - but he’s shuffling through this urban city and no one’s going, “Hey man, you okay?”. It’s all like, “Dude, nice makeup!”.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Because you can totally see people doing that! “Oh my god that is so awesome! Can I get a selfie with you?”

[both imitate zombie noises and actions]

DARKWICCAN : But Levi turns out to be this pivotal character. I would’ve never have expected him to be this pivotal character. It’s this thing that Pigeon does that’s just brilliant. She has these B & C plots that run adjacent to the A plot, and you don’t really think much of them, but then suddenly, they’re completely tied into the main story. And the main story wouldn’t have been successful without that secondary plot that was running alongside it the whole time.

DELAYNE : Right? Because when we  are first introduced to Levi, I was certainly not expecting to see him later. I was certainly not expecting to learn, when we did see him later, how he got there, but Pigeon did tell us that, and, yeah,  so so…Pigeon kept surprising me. But my favorite line about Levi was, “Levi looked like he was having a great time.” [laughter]. I think I literally laughed out loud. Luckily I am alone in my hotel room, so there’s no one to look at me strangely, but…

DARKWICCAN : I get looks. I get looks constantly, because you know I take the train to and from work everyday, and it’s an hour-long ride, and I will be reading fic. As you know, I kind of have to read everything, so I’m constantly reading - it’s one of those things where I’ve just allowed myself to relax and just kind of  let myself go with whatever I’m reading. Because otherwise I lose some of the experience. Yeah, there have been multiple times reading Get Lost on the train, where I have cackled. I have CACKLED.

I get these looks from all these people on the train, cause it’s a commuter, right? So it’s all like business-people, and I get these looks like, “is she crazy?”

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Do you have people sorta scoot away from you?

DARKWICCAN : I have had someone sitting next to me do the uncomfortable shuffle-shift, where they can’t actually get up to move because there’s nowhere to go, but like, “I’m just gonna give myself an extra inch…just in case that inch saves my life. I’m gonna give myself an extra inch away from this cackling lady.”

DELAYNE : That is fantastic.

So the most recent chapter, that is currently up now is chapter eight, and the formatting of that chapter, really is brilliant. It sorta of lends to that sort of floaty…I don’t know, I just thought it was so brilliant that I needed to mention it.

DARKWICCAN : The way that she has laid out, Nicole’s sort of “coming to”, right? Because she’s unconscious at the top, and she’s sorta drifting towards consciousness, and really it’s more than that, she’s drifting towards life.

Both Waverly & Nicole, multiple times throughout this story, have near-death - and I don’t just mean like “I had a near-death experience” type of thing, like “I ALMOST DIED.” No, it’s very much, like no. They really could have died, dire situations. They could have died super-duper easily. And so out of Nicole’s last near-death - it was pretty much more than near-death -  she…and hopefully we’re not spoiling anything too  much here, but she dies for a minute. She’s fine. She’s fine. Don’t worry about it.

DELAYNE : And Pigeon does, and…Pigeon’s notes are fantastic, first of all.

DARKWICCAN : Don’t skip the notes. For me, I don’t like reading notes before a chapter, so what I will do is, I will read the chapter and then I will read the before and after notes once I finish the chapter. Only because I’ve had certain authors accidentally spoil their own stories.

DELAYNE : I am that type of person. I over-explain a lot and I will tend to do that.

DARKWICCAN : So as a rule, I will always read the chapter first and the notes second, but I always read the notes. And you’re absolutely right, Pigeon’s notes are just as entertaining as the story itself.

DELAYNE : But she also very clearly states - the warnings are in there - so don’t feel bad if you think you’re spoiling something anything because…

DARKWICCAN : Because she spoils it herself.

DELAYNE : Pigeon.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So Nicole, she dies for a hot minute, but she’s fine. But in coming back to herself from the that, the way that she, Delayne is absolutely right - the way that Pigeon has laid out the text - is very drifting and floating and sort of, that sort of dreamlike, trance-like quality. So you sort of drift with Nicole through this, back to consciousness.

Now the whole chapter’s not like that, just the beginning. Once Nicole’s awake, she’s awake.

DELAYNE : Yeah, it’s just random bits.

DARKWICCAN : Okay! So, you know I think we’ve kind of touched on everything we can touch on without giving away the game too much, but I know that we both have got some pretty good questions that we’d like to put to sensitivepigeon to answer. And she’s going to answer them! Because we managed to convince her. It took a little bit of convincing, but managed to convince her to come on the show today and chat with us about Get Lost.

So we’re gonna do that in our second segment for today. But before we do that, as you know, we’ve got to introduce our[CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Jungle Jeebies by Sideshow Sound Theatre

DARKWICCAN : And welcome back everyone! This is the _Earp Fiction Addiction Podcast_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction and I am your host DarkWiccan and with me is my co-host, Delayne. And we are so excited, after spending a rip-roaring time in segment one talking about one of our favorite fics, Get Lost. We’re so excited to have sensitivepigeon here with us to talk about her fic, and not just sensitivepigeon, but her beta, MisFire, who we’re going to call Ashley for this segment. So Pigeon, welcome to the show.

PIGEON : Thank you for having me.

DARKWICCAN : And Ashley, thank you  so much for joining us.

ASHLEY : Glad to be here.

DARKWICCAN : So, I guess I’m going to ask you, both of you, the question I ask everyone to start: how did you get into fan-fiction? What got you into this hobby?

PIGEON : I was bored one day and I asked, you know, “Can I edit your fic?” and I made a friend and I edited their fic for them, and eventually I was like, why don’t I just post something of my own? So I posted chapter one of Get Lost and people liked it. And it was weird. So, that’s kinda how I got into it.

DELAYNE : Get Lost is your first?

PIGEON : Yeah, it’s the first ever.

DARKWICCAN : That is so mind-blowing.

DELAYNE : I am blown away.

DARKWICCAN : As if we weren’t amazed enough. Are you…seriously…Get Lost is your first fan-fiction?

PIGEON : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Have you written anything outside of fan-fiction?

PIGEON : I used to have notepads where I would just write a scene, but they were never any good. And Get Lost is from a notepad I wrote of one or two scenes of something chasing people through the woods because I wanted to scare myself. So I managed to scare myself, but I never thought anybody would read it, so I didn’t make it anything real.

DARKWICCAN : Wow. I am gobsmacked. That is absolutely incredible! So Ashley, were you the friend who Pigeon was beta-reading for? That got her going. Or was that someone…

ASHLEY : No, no that was not me. I didn’t actually come in until a bit later. And when I forced myself to be Pigeon’s friend, I found out too that this was her first thing, and I was so mind-blown that I just kept badgering her about it.

DARKWICCAN : Well thank you! Thank you for that! The world of _Wynonna Earp_ fanfic own you a debt of gratitude, Ashley.

ASHLEY : As I said, I wasn’t the one that started us on this road. I just jumped in and was just as excited as you guys were a minute ago.

DELAYNE : I’m sure your encouragement has helped significantly, so thank you for that.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, thank you. So I’ve commented before, I talk about it in the previous segment of this show. I’ve talked about it on other episodes of the podcast that Pigeon, you’re a genius, my dear. And your writing style is just…it’s so beautiful. I love it so much. I’ve called it a lovechild between Carl Hiaasen and Douglas Adams. And I have to know, can you point to authors that have inspired your style? Or is this just something that sorta burst forth from you as you started writing?

PIGEON :  So when I first started writing, it was too serious. I didn’t like taking myself that seriously…so chapter one was definitely like, I want to copy, I want to see if I can mimic Stephen King. When you’re starting off, it’s mimicry. So I just stopped taking myself so seriously and when there was a chance to make a joke, I made it.

DELAYNE: Brilliant.

DARKWICCAN : And you made it exceedingly well. The humor that weaves throughout the entire story is just brilliant and so good and so funny!

PIGEON : Thank you.

DARKWICCAN : You’re welcome! You deserve it! I still can’t get over the fact that this is your first fiction! I just…blurrrr….Delayne, take over.

DELAYNE : Okay, okay, so we’re talking about humor at this moment. So you really do make the horror humorous without it being satire. So was it important for you, to keep the wit alongside that upsetting stuff?

PIGEON : Yeah. When I’m scared I like to make a joke. Going through scare houses, like Universal Horror Nights? When I go through those houses, I just try to make it funny. Whenever I’m screaming in terror, I just try to make it funny. Like, please, no. I just think humor belongs alongside fear and I don’t like straight-up misery. What is the point? I don’t like it. So if I can make some people laugh, that’s good.

DARKWICCAN : You are handily accomplishing your goal.

Ashley, when you’re reading back a chapter, as you beta-ing, do you ever find yourself falling out of your seat laughing?

ASHLEY : All the time. I usually have whatever I’m reading in one window and a chat with Pigeon in the other and I’m screaming at her, laughing at her, while I’m trying to edit whatever I’m editing. It gets ridiculous.

DARKWICCAN : So, Ashley, I’ve got to ask you. What has been your favorite part so far?

ASHLEY : So when this airs, you will know, but right now, you don’t know. It’s yet to come. I don’t know what to say. There’s this part, at the end - no, you know Pigeon, you know that part that I was screaming at you for like an hour, while I was reading it, and the next day, I got up and yelled at you again?

PIGEON : But that was the very end, wasn’t it?

ASHLEY : Yeah…yeah, I guess it’s towards the end. Yeah, that.  [laughs] It’s just…it was so good, and it started to change the way I looked at the last two chapters. And it was just so good…I’m thinking about it now, and I’m just getting upset at how awesome it is again.

[everyone laughs]

DARKWICCAN : It’s one of those, “Oh my god this is so amazing, I frickin’ hate you!”

ASHLEY : It wasn’t even that, it was just that it was so good that, I don’t know, and I can’t tell anybody about it, so I just end up talking to myself for three days.

DARKWICCAN : Well, let’s say, safely up through chapter eight, what favorite moments exist for you, up to chapter eight?

ASHLEY : I have a couple of friends who are reading this too now, who have started, so I would say, chapter one, where Waverly thinks that it’s a skin-walker, so she screams “Champ Hardy” at it and it doesn’t do anything but look at her confusedly.

[all laughing]

ASHLEY : It’s a good part and it’s so funny, that it’s just disarming. I really like that part.

DARKWICCAN : You know it’s funny that you bring that up in talking about this creature because it’s been miss ID'd, it’s been misidentified a couple of times. At this point, they’re sort of going with the idea that it’s a Wendigo? Wendigo Mark II or something like that? But it probably isn’t, it probably isn’t that, but I have to ask. Pigeon, what elements are you taking directly from myth and what did you come up with on yourself to sort of develop this creature that is currently being called a Wendigo?

PIGEON : Well the two myths have something big in common. The Wendigo myth is traditionally used to warn against greed and taking from your fellow human. And the skinwalker myth is more about familial homicide and crossing lines that should never be crossed. So those two things have a big thing in common that is sort of the heart of the antagonists. And the Beast is made up of everything that scares me. I don’t like hallways. Hallways fucking scare me, so…

DARKWICCAN : Oh, that’s interesting. Hallways scare you, so you have that extensive section in what they think is a labyrinth…

PIGEON :  Yeah, and mazes scare me too. I always have nightmares about mazes.

DARKWICCAN : Well, what is it about mazes that scare you? Just the not knowing how to get out situation or?

PIGEON : Being lost. Being lost is terrifying and I really wanted to capture that.

DARKWICCAN : I think you did really well. I mean, the story itself is called Get Lost and there is this element of the characters trying to find themselves both out of whatever location they’re in, that they’re trying to get out of that they’re lost in, and also kind of find themselves out of their inner demons, if that makes sense.

PIGEON : That’s basically the point.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome! Points for DW! Nailing it on the first!

DELAYNE :  So, Pigeon, the later chapters begin feature the chaotic nature of the Beast and how his violent creation sort of gets more wide-reaching with the brutality. So how did you find it writing such graphic violence?

PIGEON : I don’t like big, overly detailed descriptions of graphic things, so I just don’t want to waste the reader’s time. Some things I never show you, because you already know what it looks like. Do I need to show you what Waverly comes across in the forest? What’s left of Bobo, no I don’t, so I don’t show you. You’ve already seen that, so the words - “He died.”  - should be enough. But there are some other parts that I have to show you because I’m going to hurt you. I’m gonna hurt you. So there’s a lot of fucked up stuff that goes on, but you need to see it. Some lines I didn’t cross and won’t cross ever. But it sort of got tiring. So during the time I was drafting chapter seven, I was so tired of these terrible things going on that I started writing One-Eighty. That’s sorta how I dealt with it.

DELAYNE : It sounds like you’ve found a pretty good balance. Not just…I think the part that we read is well-balanced, but it sounds like you balance yourself in writing it.

PIGEON : Yeah. I try cause I just don’t like the hopelessness that’s always present in stories like Pet Cemetery. When I read that, I was so upset at the ending. I just promised myself I was never going to write something that miserable. It was always going to have a happy ending. So I just want to treat the reader with respect and not just give them misery.

DARKWICCAN : Exactly. You wanna leave your audience breathless , not exhausted.

PIGEON : Yes, absolutely!

DELAYNE : That was well-said.

DARKWICCAN : I have to give props to Laragh for that. Laragh told me that saying, and I’m like “oh my gosh, I’m stealing that,” but I’m obviously giving credit where credit is due.

So as you’re writing, and sorta developing each subsequent chapter, I’ve noticed in your notes, in your chapter notes, that you mention it’s not unusual for you to write an entire chapter, only to bin it, to toss it in the trash and start over. So what are you looking for in your chapters, as you’re writing, in order for them to sorta pass your personal test of muster? To reach the point where you’re going to post it on Ao3? And kind of a follow up to that, what is the greatest number of iterations any one of your chapters have gone through before you were comfortable with posting it?

PIGEON : Oh god…this is sorta embarrassing. Chapter seven…chapter seven took seven or eight, and that made eighty pages that I had to bin.

DARKWICCAN : WOW.

PIGEON : When  I discovered that other authors don’t do that, it was really embarrassing. I…

DARKWICCAN : NO.

PIGEON : I can’t tell you what it’s like to write an entire chapter and then have to kill the entire thing.

DARKWICCAN : But that’s not a sign of a poor author. That’s a sign of a perfectionist. That is the sign of someone who has got something very specific they are trying to capture and if they’re not getting it how they need it to be, they’re like, “I’m not going to waste anyone else’s time with this until it’s right.” I think that is incredibly admirable.

DELAYNE : Yes, and I know how that feels because I did it. I had a breakthrough on one of my old fics and I wrote a bunch of stuff and I started talking to DW about it she’s like, “That’s a terrible idea!” And I realized she was right!

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : You make me sound like such a nice person, Delayne.

DELAYNE : No, you were so right though. It was not…it really took the message of my story and ignored it completely. And I hadn’t even realized, so I was thankful for the suggestion, but having written a whole bunch and feeling super proud, oh I wrote all of these words and having it…I can still repurpose some of my ideas, but yeah, I was, it was difficult. But it was good.

DARKWICCAN : So Ashley, let me ask you - I will ask both of you really - but how many versions of a chapter do you usually get from Pigeon before it’s finalized? Or do you just get the one that she’s like, “Okay, I think this is the one that’s actually going places, you should read this one now”?

ASHLEY : Well, I think she’s being a little bit unfair now because again, Get Lost is her very first fic. So she’s being a little unfair to herself in saying “Oh, I wrote all this, but it was horrible, so I chucked it”. But I also feel like, as she’s been writing and getting better and getting used to writing and getting into her own story, and even just using Get Lost as a meter, all the horror of Get Lost - I start getting more of a whole idea and then I can ask questions. And fleshes things out instead of her being like, “Well, this is destroyed, we have to start over again”. So I think, she’s a little hard on herself, cause now I will get a whole chapter, and even if it’s not finished or all the way there, it’s not that we’re going to, in a week, destroy everything.

DARKWICCAN : Burn it to the ground.

ASHLEY : Right. Exactly.

DELAYNE : That really speaks to how important it is to have a beta or someone to even just bounce ideas off of. I mean, if I had talked to DW maybe before I had started writing, I would’ve seen the error of my ways, instead of talking about it afterwards.

PIGEON : It’s absolutely the same. Most of these problems have stopped because I’ve started being open about all of these things. Because I never told anyone, because I was too scared that they’d be like, “Well, what the fuck are you talking about?” So I started trusting Ashley with everything and sometimes…She saved me from making a big mistake once, and it was hard, but now things are just better. I don’t have to waste nearly as much time.

DARKWICCAN : We’ve talked about it on the podcast; I tweet about it constantly. Beta readers are a gift.

DELAYNE : What would we do without them?

DARKWICCAN : What would we do without them? And when you establish…when you find your beta reader, it’s almost like finding your life partner almost. When you find your beta reader, it’s like “Oh my gosh, my person, my writing person, we’re on the same wavelength, we understand each other, but you can also smack me upside the head when I’m going down my own road of bullshit. And make sure that what I’m writing is going to actually be worth reading!”. Beta readers, man! Beta readers, man, are the world’s gift to fan-fiction and if you are writing, and you don’t have a beta reader, at least have a friend double-check your work.

DELAYNE : Yes. So to go back to you mentioning how when you got stuck, you started writing One-Eighty. So writing them concurrently, I’m curious, is it difficult to sorta switch between that horror conflict versus the human conflict?

[Ashley laughing]

PIGEON : Stop…stop laughing at me! Sorta, yes. If I’m in a One-Eighty mood, I cannot write Get Lost, and if I’m in a Get Lost mood, I cannot write One-Eighty. Because sometimes when I do that, One-Eighty comes out way too serious…like way too intense! And the things that happen are…they can be slightly frightening. Like there’s this scene coming up soon where Waverly…

There’s this scene coming up soon that was way too scary the first time I was writing it, and I had to tone it down a lot. So that’s One-Eighty, but Get Lost, chapter nine, had this huge issue where Waverly was just like, “Oh wow, I’m One-Eighty Waverly. I’m not a hero. What’s all this going on?” So she was so passive and it was a huge problem, so I had redo everything and just make her active. You know, Get Lost is about Waverly being the hero in the end, being the person who kills the Beast, does everything. She has that courage, whether or not her memories are there, so that’s chapter nine. But in One-Eighty, Waverly is struggling with the fact that she has feelings for her coworker, not killing this terrible, terrible monster!

DARKWICCAN : It’s a completely different dynamic!

ASHLEY : What’s funny is that it almost would’ve worked too. She would’ve almost gotten away with it, had she not changed it.

DARKWICCAN : If it hadn’t been for those meddling kids…

ASHLEY : Right, hate being the meddling kid but…it almost would’ve worked, but the changes made it so much better and so much more accurately Get Lost that it’s…it’s good.

DARKWICCAN : I’m so looking forward to this next chapter.

DELAYNE : Well, I actually sort of have a random question for you, Pigeon.

PIGEON : Yeah…

DELAYNE : What kind of pigeon are you?

PIGEON : Umm, I’m a sensitive one. I’m really sensitive. People made fun of me as I was younger. They called me “way too sensitive” so I am a sensitive pigeon. I own it now.

DELAYNE : I love that you own it! Based on One-Eighty, you are a scientist as well, is that correct?

PIGEON : I wanted to go into a science career. I wanted to go into biotech, but that was not…really what I’m passionate about is space travel and all of that, but I just don’t have the interest in biology, or like, like the discipline to go into physics, or like engineering or something, so I’m just going to go into IT and maybe like, sneak into space X…yo, what up?

DELAYNE : I was hoping to get a scientific name of what type of pigeon. Or you could tell me about your pigeon. What kind of pigeon is your pigeon?

DARKWICCAN : That’s right, we have a fifth guest on the podcast today and that is Enyo, sensitive pigeon’s pigeon.

PIGEON : Yeah, she’s flying around my room right now…she’s a Lucerne goad caller [ph].I think it’s a Swiss…hang on….google…Lucerne is a central city of Switzerland. So the Swiss have really good ideas. She’s got a little hat. She’s got a gold collar and she’s got some fuzzy pants, and the breed is known for being very calm and docile, which is NOT what Enyo is. Enyo is a very mean bird, so I’m pretty sure she’s actually a dude, but I just like been calling her Enyo, with the pronouns…and also her name, Enyo, is Greek for this goddess of war who was present in the sacking of Troy, so she represents the destruction of cities. And I thought I would be ironic, because Lucernes are just so calm, right?

DARKWICCAN : So, let me get this straight?

PIGEON : She’s not calm at all.

DARKWICCAN : So you’re the sensitive pigeon and Enyo is the agro pigeon?

PIGEON : Yes. Yes! Enyo is a very warlike pigeon.

DARKWICCAN : Well, she’s just trying to live up to her name. Maybe it’s just misgendering her and she’s actually a he, or you can go with plural pronouns and just be like “they/them”.

PIGEON : I don’t know for sure…

DELAYNE : She could just be a really really mean lady pigeon.  (laughs)

DARKWICCAN : She IS an angry bird. Sorry, you’ve probably had that joke made before.

DELAYNE : No I get it. I have a dog, his name is Loki, and he is a little monster. He is a little beast.

DARKWICCAN : So, circling back to Get Lost, where did the idea for zombie Levi come from?

PIGEON : The original thing, Levi comes back, and Nicole pushes him out a window, and he dies. So, I was really bored with that. It was just miserable; he didn’t deserve that. He doesn’t deserve to be pushed out a window, y’know? So, I was like, this is so dreadful and dreary and awful, it needs something hopeful. So, I’m sorry Levi, here: you can have goodness and there’s actually a pretty big reason for why he is the way he is. I think Ashley can probably figure it out from this vague statement, but by the time people finish chapter nine, they can probably understand why he’s still the way he is and why he was able to just side with Nicole and be the way he is.

DARKWICCAN : I was talking about this in the first segment with Delayne. We were fangirling all over this story. Levi is actually my favorite character.

ASHLEY : I love Levi too! I’m so glad that somebody else loves him.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, he is absolutely…I mean, obviously I love Nicole. I love Waverly. I love them all. But really, really Levi is my favorite for this story.

PIGEON : You’re gonna love this scene in chapter ten then. Ashley helped me think of it. You’re gonna love it.

DARKWICCAN : So here’s a question for you. You currently have on Ao3 this listed as a ten chapter fic. You’re up to chapter eight right now. Does it look like you’re on track for that? Do you think you’re going to wrap it up in the tenth chapter or do you think you might…you think it might carry on beyond that?

PIGEON : Well, chapter nine pretty much wraps up the huge, big questions. It solves basically everything except for that B plot. And chapter ten is like what happens after and…

DARKWICCAN : Like an epilogue?

PIGEON : Yeah…well, not an epilogue, but just a complete ending.

DELAYNE : Just a finish.

ASHLEY : It was said, there’s one big thing that needs to be tied up in ten left, and I think that will be enough to do it. It shouldn’t need anything beyond that.

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha. Cool! Well, that’s exciting! Woohoohoo. I’m looking forward to that!

ASHLEY : Oh, you’re gonna love it.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, I know I’m going to love it. I love this entire story. Pigeon, I say this trepidatiously, because I always worry about fanfic authors disappearing from the world of fan-fiction, but you are excellent enough to write actual, publishable…I mean, this is publishable. Change the names and you can publish it. You could write an actual novel.

PIGEON : Wow, thank you.

DARKWICCAN : So if you ever find yourself inspired to write something outside of fan-fiction, do it! Do it, dammit! Because, heck, I’d be first in line to buy that book. I will be first in line.

DELAYNE : I’ll be second.

DARKWICCAN : Everybody else behind us!

PIGEON: Two book sells? I’ve got enough for a sweet tea!

DELAYNE : Right! I’ve noticed you drink sweet tea quite a bit in your notes. I’m a tea person myself, so cheers to you.

DARKWICCAN : And being from the South myself, I’m a huge fan of sweet tea. Although I can’t drink commercial sweet tea anymore, you know, like McDonald’s has a sweet tea. Can’t do it because it’s actually just too sweet, which I didn’t think was possible.

Okay, well, we’ve held ya hostage in this situation long enough, I think. We’re at a point where we can loose your bonds and let you go. But before we do, I have to ask the final question we ask all our guests. So this is for both of you, Ashley and Pigeon.

You’re stranded on a deserted island, and you can have only one fan-fiction to read. What is it?

PIGEON : Oh yeah! You know my answer! In Fate’s Hands, baby! Skillzyo is amazing! Shout out to skillzyo, what up babe? She wrote some really good stuff. In Fate’s Hands is like WOW, I love it. It hits all the points that I love.

DELAYNE : We will be providing a link so that everyone else can read it.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, we always provide links in our show notes for our guests and all the fics. So In Fate’s Hands by skillzyo. I gotta agree, that is a fantastic story.  Um, okay, Ashley, heat’s on you now.

ASHLEY : I’m the worst, so I’m going to go to the Swan Queen fandom and say Swanhood & The Evil Queen by Coalition Girl. It’s an amazing series; I love it. It’s great.

DARKWICCAN : Swanhood & The Evil Queen?

ASHLEY : Yeah, it’s kinda like Swan as the Robin Hood character and it kinda goes from the Enchanted Forest to modern day and it just breaks your whole soul apart and puts it back together. It’s a good book.

DARKWICCAN : And it’s by Coalition…?

ASHLEY : Coalition Girl.

DARKWICCAN : Coalition Girl. Okay, I’ll have to check that one out.

ASHLEY : It’s a three-piece, but it’s just great. It’s great.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome, that’s awesome. We will provide links to both of those in the show notes so our listeners can give those both a try. And I’m really enjoying our guests coming on and giving us recommendations outside of WayHaught and _Wynonna Earp_. I think that’s actually good. It’s good to expand.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN :  Yes. Well, Pigeon and Ashley, and Enyo, thank you so much for coming on the show today. We really had a blast chatting with you two.

ASHLEY : Thanks for having us.

PIGEON : Thank you.

DARKWICCAN : You’re welcome. And I’m wondering, so you’re down in Florida there, Pigeon. Are you planning on doing anything for President’s Day Weekend?

PIGEON : Um, probably not. I’m probably just gonna write some more fan-fiction.

DARKWICCAN : I think we’re all okay with that! So we’ll just leave you be so you can get down to that and everybody else, have a great week!

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And wraps it up for this episode of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Thanks for joining us. Tremendous thanks to Sensitive Pigeon and her beta Ashley, aka Miss Fire, for coming on to chat with us. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story  by Darren Korb; The Music Box Souvenir Shop and Jungle Jeebies by Sideshow Sound Theatre; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Maddigan

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast
> 
> We're also on iTunes!


	10. Give It to Me Straight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week DW and Delayne explore the world of 'straight ship' fics!
> 
>  
> 
> We share our four favorite titles and then settle down to chat with author Takada Saiko.

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/give-it-to-me-straight)

 

ORIGINAL AIR DATE: MARCH 19, 2018

 

Read the Fics!

[The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12366639) by pyes

[Craving Intimacy and Almonds (But Only One of Those Can Be Storebought)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13175853) by sweeterthankarma (formerly darkonlyytoshine)

[Feelings and Solidarity Naps](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13106928) by convolutedConcussion

[Such Great Heights](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13196559) by Takada_Saiko 

 

  

Takada's Desert Island Fic: [A Little Bit of Peace and a Bathtub's Embrace](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12876291) by shadowmanshenanigans

 

TRANSCRIPT FOR THE DEAF AND HOH BY FLYING FANATIC

 

EFA EPISODE 10 – GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to this week’s episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host DarkWiccan and with me is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And this week we are diving into kinda alien territory. [laughter] Alien territory for us, right Delayne?

DELAYNE : For us, probably not everyone.

DARKWICCAN : No, not – yeah. Possibly for the majority of folks who listen to this podcast might also be foreign territory, but, y'know, never know, don’t want to be exclusionary.

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : This week we are talking about straight fics. Fics that feature straight relationships, typically those like Wynonna and Doc, or Wynonna and Dolls, or other straight couples that have shown up on _Wynonna Earp_ . We’re still staying within _Wynonna Earp_ , this is the show all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction, but we’re treading away from the Wayhaught, sort of, funnel, and stepping out into the broader spectrum.

And the funny thing is there weren’t a whole lot of fics for us to go through. What did you say the percentage was, comparatively, Delayne?

DELAYNE : I think it rounded up, but was it eighty-three? Oh, bollocks.

DARKWICCAN : Eighty-three, eighty-four percent of the fics –

DELAYNE : Aha! Eighty-three percent!

DARKWICCAN : Eight-three percent?

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Eighty-three percent of the fics on AO3, at least?

DELAYNE : That did not tag Waverly and Nicole as –

DARKWICCAN : Right, as being in a relationship.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So that’s – so yeah. So, eighty-three percent is the quantity of fics that have the Wayhaught relationship tag. Meaning that the remaining – math is hard – seventeen percent? [Delayne laughs] The remaining seventeen percent may feature Waverly and Nicole, as a couple, but the focus probably is not going to be on them, it’s going to be on other characters.

DELAYNE : Right, and the ones that do - in the eighty-three percent - that do tag Waverly and Nicole, they might not necessarily be the featured relationship, but chances are very likely that they are.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. It’s – [laughter] sorry. I just find this – here’s the funny thing. We are so used to being in the minority – particularly when it comes to media – that it’s really strange, it’s a strange feeling to be in not just the majority, but the vast majority.

DELAYNE : Yeah! Now that you point that out, I never really – because, y'know, my fandoms have been very, very concentrated.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, ‘cause you look for media that represents _you_.

DELAYNE : Exactly. And so, y'know, the spaces that I have found are definitely very supportive, and all about the women loving women, so, yeah it is – now that you mention it, and I realize, oh, yeah. Trying to find other lesbians out in the real world is hard, but in these fandoms it’s fantastic.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s great. [laughter] An embarrassment of riches. But we’re not talking about those riches today, we’re talking about the minority group, the straight ships in this particular fandom, which, again, is going to be either Wynonna and Doc, Wynonna and Dolls, or a couple other straight characters.

We didn’t choose any fics to discuss today that had any sort of original characters in them, or OC, as they’re called by the young ‘uns today. Don’t have any OC characters. [laughter] That’s - I just realized I – that was a redundant statement. I just said original character characters.

Anyway. We focused on fics that represent straight relationships that are canon within the show Wynonna Earp. We have four fics to talk about today, we each picked two, and yeah, I guess we should just sort of what, dive right in?

DELAYNE : [laughter] Let’s dive right into The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

DARKWICCAN : Wah-hey. That sounded very professional. You’ve made me so proud this day. [laughter] Okay, so who – what’s the ship focus for this one, Delayne? And who’s it by?

DELAYNE : So The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is by pyes, and the focus is on Doc and Wynonna, and what’s even more focused is this is an Explicit rated fic, so there is _only_ Doc and Wynonna.

DARKWICCAN : Okay. What –

DELAYNE : When you ask me to look for straight ships, man I went all the way.

DARKWICCAN : You did. You embraced it. Good for you. Okay. Well, okay, so it’s got sex in it, fine, obviously it’s straight sex, but is that like the focus of the story?

DELAYNE : So, the summary on AO3 is, “Awakened by a nightmare, Wynonna pays Doc a visit in the barn.”

DARKWICCAN : Okay.

DELAYNE : And when I started reading it I got hooked on Wynonna’s nightmare. I mean, just the first two paragraphs was just so well written I had keep reading. And once I realized it was an E-rated fic I still had to keep reading. And it is so well-written that I was actually very glad I read it, because it’s not – I mean it’s thirteen – over thirteen thousand words in two chapters - but it’s not all smut.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I’ve been pretending like I didn’t read it. I did read it, I was just kind of leading you along a little bit. Yeah, that is one thing that really captured me, right off the bat, is that this is an incredibly well-written piece that – the point of the piece is not getting Wynonna and Doc in bed together. The point of the piece is that Wynonna is seeking comfort, and the only way that – or the way that she is most comfortable with, y'know what I mean, the way that she has relied on –

DELAYNE : Right.

DARKWICCAN : - and the way that’s she’s relied on it is to, sort of, it’s a physical release. But again, even saying that, that’s not the point of the fic.

DELAYNE : Right, because we do have the sex scene, but that’s sort of – it’s not super long, and it’s not even super detailed. But then the conversation –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, the conversation.

DELAYNE : - y'know, the dealing with afterwards.

DARKWICCAN : Oh my goodness, the conversation. Doc is written so well. Both Wynonna and Doc –

DELAYNE : Right!

DARKWICCAN : - both of them are written so well in this piece, I can see and hear Melanie and Tim delivering these lines. They are so true to character, and – it’s almost cinematic, in my mind, really, as I was reading this. It was just so beautifully and vividly captured. And again, the dialogue, which is so perfect, that’s what got my attention in this piece.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : And held it.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I mean, once I was grabbed, just from the description of the nightmare and how heading it felt, I was definitely held by the rest of it.

DARKWICCAN : And, like you say, the conversation, both leading up to but especially after they’re intimate together, is so deep and vulnerable and it’s the first time I think that Wynonna is shown as vulnerable, like this vulnerable. She’s always vulnerable, but she’s just so – she basically just allows herself to open up to Doc, and Doc opens up to her, more than they’ve ever done with each other. And then when she, at the end, has to go back to the main homestead, the main structure, the house, it’s like you can see her sort of shutting those doors closed again, and it’s kind of sad, yeah, but it’s like –

DELAYNE : Oh, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Doc understands that’s what she needs to do in that moment. And it’s just, it’s so beautiful. I never thought I would say that I found a fanfic about a straight ship moving and beautiful, but here we are.

DELAYNE : Right? I’m so glad you suggested this, because – and that’s the other thing, when I was reading others, trying to decide, I did notice a theme that Wynonna dealing with feelings - both in the Wynonna/Doc relationship feelings, and then her dealing with feelings about Dolls – both ships tend to place a lot of emphasis on, “Okay, we – there’s stuff going on here, and here is how I think Wynonna would deal with it.” And some of them, especially this one, beautifully written.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. I think that – no – I almost said we have the cream of the crop, but that just sounds so wrong.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Okay, so I do have a fun one, a fun line that I wrote down. So, bare-chested Wynonna says, “’Yeah,’ she preened. ‘The gun is really my third most memorable feature.’” [laughter] So, and that’s the other thing, as if you can draw us in and keep us in with humor, oh, that’s a big thing.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. There’s this great moment at the end where Wynonna is trying to both prepare and apologize to Doc about the fact that she is going to essentially use him, and continue to use him, however she needs to, through this process of getting the curse – of breaking the curse. And whether that means as a weapon, or as a tool for her own physical needs, or what have you, she’s basically apologizing to him, and preparing him in advance. And he, being Doc, is like, “Well, yeah. I kind of figured that, and I’m here for the long haul.” Y'know, he basically says a longer version of “I’m all in.”

DELAYNE : Yeah. I didn’t think about it like that. Wow.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and at one point Doc says to Wynonna, “Do you know what you are?” And Wynonna replies, “An incredibly needy landlord?” [laughter] But – but – [laughter] Yeah, and he laughs at that, but then he says, “You were the rope that got me out, and even if you are the rope that hangs me, well, I reckon it will have been worth it.” And I just went “Ugh, phew.” Y'know?

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : So, I’m glad you were feeling as much with this as I was feeling.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah.

DELAYNE : So that’s fantastic.

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah, really…

DELAYNE : Everyone –

DARKWICCAN : Hit me deep.

DARKWICCAN : It’s interesting in that, in watching the show, I find myself to lean more toward Wynonna and Doc together, because it feels like there’s just, I don’t know, they seem to flow better. But that’s just, that’s totally me. Watching the first season, I kind of felt there was some awkward pushing that was happening in the writing to try to get Wynonna and Dolls to spark off each other, and I just never believed the spark in Season One. Now, Season Two, especially the episode where – of the vision quest – where Wynonna has to be resuscitated at the end, and we see Wynonna and Dolls lying in bed together, just in a comforting way, that’s when I went “Aha! Now I see it! Now I see Wynonna and Dolls.”

I didn’t see it before, but, y'know, so still, I honestly, I don’t care who she ends up with, because I think, y'know, they’re both good kind of couple sets, but reading the Wynonna and Doc piece that you found just re, kind of, affirmed my original thought process of, like, well I think that – I think I’m a Wyndoc shipper!

DELAYNE : That you’re a Doc/Wynonna shipper?

DARKWICCAN : I mean, low key, low key, y'know. [laughter] But, yeah. Hopefully I don’t get any – sorry, Wyndolls folks, but hey, you know what? I’m going to make up for it, right now. I’m going to make up for it right now, because my first choice of my two fics for today’s podcast is a Wyndolls story! It’s called Craving Intimacy and Almonds (But Only One of Those Can Be Storebought) by sweeterthankarma. And –

DELAYNE : Oh, my gosh, this is the sweetest little fic.

DARKWICCAN : Isn’t it? It’s so sweet! It just makes you just kinda go, “Aw.” So, the premise is that Wynonna is pregnant and craving all sorts of things at all sorts of times. Which is pretty par for the course. And of course, because it’s Wynonna, it’s that much more amped up. [laughter]

When I was a kid, we used to get this catalogue called Wireless, and it had all sorts of novelty items, but one of them was a sweater that had a cartoon of a woman standing, sort of, legs akimbo, and arms held heavenward, and the caption said, “I want it all, I want it delivered!” And that kind of – [laughter] I think accurately captures pregnant Wynonna in a craving frenzy. [laughter] At least in this story.

So, the premise of this fic is that Wynonna wakes Dolls up at four in the morning because she’s craving almonds.

DELAYNE : Was it three, or four? Or –

DARKWICCAN : Four. Yeah.

DELAYNE : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : It was four. ‘Cause he says, “You realize it’s almost four A.M., right?”

DELAYNE : Oh, right.

DARKWICCAN : So –

DELAYNE : How did I get that – [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : I dunno!

DELAYNE : I was probably reading it at three o’clock in the morning.

DARKWICCAN : There you go, that’s what it was. But, so, she wakes him up, and, because she’s craving almonds, there aren’t almonds in the homestead, she already checked with Waverly, she already looked in all the cabinets, nothing there.

DELAYNE : She already interrupted Waverly and Nicole, very important.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Luckily, only interrupted them once. The first time, they weren’t doing anything, the second time, unfortunately…. [laughter] But here’s the thing, this entire fic is told from Dolls’s point of view. So, we don’t get the Wynonna Interruptus, we just hear about it from Wynonna as she’s telling Dolls about it on the phone. So, Dolls then goes on the sort of quest to find the almonds, which at four in the morning, in Purgatory, is not that easy.

DELAYNE : I would imagine not. I have live in small towns before where stuff is closed even on Sundays, like I really am having trouble not seeing him find anything at four o’clock in the morning.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. But, y'know, good man that he is, he manages to track down some almonds, and he finally shows up at the homestead, closer to five A.M. And as Wynonna is gleefully snacking on these shelled nuts they start chatting, and it’s just a really sweet, kind of quiet, intimate conversation that they have with each other. And they don’t cross any, like, lines, really, it’s just you can see that they’re opening up to each other more than they have before.

DELAYNE : Right. Actually, I made a note that their relationship status is best described by a line in Dolls’s head, which actually is also the line in the summary, that it’s “something else he doesn’t have a word for quite yet.”

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. But what I really enjoy about this story is that you can feel the affection come through in the writing, the affection that Dolls really has for Wynonna. And, conversely, you can feel the affection radiating back from Wynonna to Dolls. Now, it’s rated G, so y'know, it’s safely within the lines, but it’s just such a sweet little story, I really love it. It’s just such a sweet little one-shot.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I mean, someone who’s willing to get up and go to the store at four o’clock in the morning, which, my wife has never been pregnant, but I have definitely got me ass out of bed when she wanted something, and gone to the damn store.

DARKWICCAN : Aw. [laughter] See, here’s the thing, if my wife was craving something, I would offer to go, and she’d be like, “No, no, no, no, don’t go.” [laughter] But no, I love the fact that yeah, he does get up, and he goes. And he gets up and goes in such a hurry that he doesn’t really bother to change out of his pajamas, so he shows up at the homestead still wearing his pajamas.

DELAYNE : Which, in a very Wynonna fashion, proceeds to make fun of him for wearing pajamas. [laughter]

DELAYNE : But he’s right back, like, “Hey, wait a minute, you wake me up at four in the morning, this is what you get.” [laughter] So yeah, so that’s just a really nice, sweet, little Wyndolls fic.

DELAYNE : So, y'know, another great Wyndolls fic, where they’re kind of super sweet is  Feelings, and Solidarity Naps by convolutedConcussion.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, and it is as described, it’s about feelings and solidarty naps.

DELAYNE : [laughter] This one is rated M, and it’s based on two prompts: someone wanting Wynonna and Dolls to have that promise to talk; and then someone else who wanted a sweet little first time together fic.

DARKWICCAN : Now, that’s interesting to me. Not the two prompts that were combined, but that one of them was that they wanted to read a first time together fic. And unless I really missed something, they come close, but they don’t actually do it? I – I mean I do tend to read very quickly, but I think I would have noticed, like. [laughter]

DELAYNE : No, it’s at the end.

DARKWICCAN : Okay.

DELAYNE : It’s at the very, very end.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, that’s – oh, there we go. Okay.

DELAYNE : Like I’m pretty sure.

DARKWICCAN : You’re absolutely right, there it is. [laughter] Well, y'know –

DELAYNE : You must have been skimming a little fast there.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I think I missed that element in that one paragraph. That’s why I was confused, ‘cause I missed a sentence. That sentence changes everything. [laughter] And it is one sentence that changes everything.

DELAYNE : Son of a bitch.

DARKWICCAN : And it’s in the middle of the paragraph.

DELAYNE : It is a good sized fic, it’s over ten thousand words, and it isn’t until the very, very end, very short, but it is rated M, so it’s certainly not very explicit. So I can see – and it’s right at the end, so I can see how you missed it.

But, I definitely – the first part, where – well, this takes place - appears to take place after the Season Two finale, and it’s made note that Wynonna is back from wherever she was – doesn’t say where, just says she’s back – and Doc has scampered off somewhere, so it’s just – we do see Nicole and Waverly, but they’re certainly not the focus of this story – and they start out with Wynonna just wanting to train. So Dolls proceeds to kick her ass. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, doesn’t she say to Dolls, “Kick my ass?”

DELAYNE : Yeah, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : She makes that request.

DELAYNE : That’s what she wanted, she wanted that physicality of being beaten up, I guess. Or just, y'know –

DARKWICCAN : She wanted the workout.

DELAYNE : I dunno. Yeah, she wanted the workout. ‘Cause it was getting too silent in there. Nicole’s line notes, “There’s a real weird vibe in here, it’s –“ [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Yeah, I thought that was funny. Waverly and Nicole are kind of on the periphery of this one.

DELAYNE : Yep. There is an interesting headcanon that I really like in this, and that is Dolls’s hotel room was like, a cover.

DARKWICCAN : Right!

DELAYNE : And that he actually has an apartment, or a – I actually wrote bachelor pad. I think Wynonna actually teases him about having a bachelor pad.

DARKWICCAN : Well, because, yeah, he complained that – he said, “Don’t tease me about the furniture, they’re decorating because it’s not like there’s an Ikea nearby.” So, it sounds like all the furniture is basically kind of catch as catch can, what he could find, y'know, local to Purgatory, without dropping a mint.

DELAYNE : [laughter] But they definitely – Dolls opens way up, and Wynonna learns a lot about him.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, we get some Dolls backstory, which is nice. I think this is the first thing I’ve read where we get any – have gotten any kind of speculative backstory on Dolls.

DELAYNE : But it’s definitely – there’s a lot of humor in this one too. The cracks about _Twilight_ , detachable showerhead, Clifford the demonic big red dog, and y'know, longest running relationship.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : So, all of those, those are four hilarious things that I just had to mention. And if you wanna know more about them, you just have to go read it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, the joke – ‘cause, well, I will give – can I give away the detachable showerhead joke, is that okay?

DELAYNE : Yes. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so, basically Wynonna’s in the shower at the homestead, and she’s in her head, and she’s so far in her head that she looses track of time, and doesn’t even realize that she’s standing under cold water until Waverly is banging on the door, y'know, “What the hell are you doing in there?” And, so, when Wynonna, y'know, snaps to and turns off the shower, and is out, and is toweling off, and she opens the door and Waverly’s like giving her this look, like “What the hell?” And Wynonna goes, “Well, look, the showerhead’s not detachable, so it takes some maneuvering.” [laughter] Yeah.

DELAYNE : Right? So there we go, the humor, again.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. But again, this is another author who has taken the time to really dive into and explore Dolls’s very sweet side, the side that we know exists, we’ve seen elements of it, we’ve seen elements of it in his character on the show, but most of the time he’s very stoic and serious. So, it was just, again, just nice, it was just nice to see this more sensitive, sweet, open side to him. And Wynonna too!

DELAYNE : Yes. Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Ah, okay, so that, I think, brings us to our final fic today, which is my second choice, which is called Such Great Heights by Takada Saiko. And the really interesting thing about this is that while it does have a Wyndoc relationship, and Wayhaught are also here, the main ship of this story, really, is Willa and Bobo.

DELAYNE : Right? I was definitely taken by surprise with this fic. The notes I made on this first chapter: wow.

DARKWICCAN : Well, this is the longest of the four fics we’ve talked about today. And, in fact, it’s not quite finished  yet, I think it’s still got one or two chapters to go, it’s currently at fifteen chapters. And it really is an arc, it’s a full arc.

We start of in this sort of perfect Purgatory, and Wynonna and Doc are together, and they’re raising Alice, and Waverly and Nicole are together, and they’re very happy, and Willa and Bobo are together, and Bobo is Robert, Bobo is Robert Swane [ph]. Or Svain, I should say. Svain, gotta hit that “V”. [laughter] And they have a little girl named Gracie, and another on the way, and Robert is a teacher at the local high school, and Dolls is unattached, he’s still BBD.

Another interesting thing in this is that when we start off Waverly is, and always has been, the heir, the Earp heir.

DELAYNE : That was definitely an interesting titbit.

DARKWICCAN : And had dispatched all – now, make note of this – she had successfully dispatched all seventy-six Revenants. Now, I remember when I was reading that my eyebrows shot up real high, to my hairline, I was like, “Seventy-six?!” And of course I’m like, “Well, there’s Robert, but he’s not Bobo, he’s with – oooh.” And then I was like, “Okay, Takada. Okay, Takada, you got my attention, let’s do this.” [laughter]

And the thing is that normally you think, “Ugh, Willa and Bobo, like, ew.” Y'know? ‘Cause they were kind of – the idea of them together on the show was, I think, purposefully made to be a little bit grotesque and creepy.

DELAYNE : And super creepy!

DARKWICCAN : But here, in this story, they’re a loving, normal couple, and are very – you can empathize with them, you can sympathize for them, and you want to root for them. And –

DELAYNE : Right? I -

DARKWICCAN : Right.

DELAYNE : - and love being happy to not be the heir, y'know?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, both Willa and Wynonna are thrilled that Waverly is the heir. And, so when their world gets turned upside down, or rather, I should say, when their world gets turned right side up, and everything goes to hell, it makes – it just – it kinda gets you right in the heart, ‘cause watching Robert become Bobo again, and because he’s just lost everything, I just heartbreaking.

And watching - but the thing is, is once the kind of come to this place where they’re supposed to be enemies, where Bobo is supposed to be an enemy of the Earps, he decides he’s tired of being messed with. He’s tired of, y'know, being taken advantage of, and he decides no, I’m siding with the winning team, I’m siding with the Earps. Because he knows that even if he can’t get everything back, at the end, he can get the most important thing back, in the end.

I’m just, as you can tell, I’m trying real hard not to give away the game here.

DELAYNE : I really was not sure, like, like I said my notes about the first, it’s super domestic, canon adjacent, y'know, there’s still a curse, and Waverly’s the heir, Doc wasn’t immortal, Bobo’s not a Revenant, Nicole is Sheriff, and it’s like I just stopped taking notes.

DARKWICCAN : Well, in the – as we start off, everybody has history with each other. Y'know, Doc is, as you’re saying, not immortal, he and Bobo went to school together and so they have these shared memories from high school, contemporary high school. Again, the three Earp sisters basically get along with each other. Y'know, everyone has their quirks, byt they all get along and they’re all supportive of each other, they watch each other’s kids, I mean, yeah, it’s really domestic, and just slightly, like, “Okay, well where are we going here.”

Like – I honestly, when I first started reading this, I clicked on it because it showed up in my Wayhaught search. So – because they are tagged, it is tagged Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught relationship story, in addition to the other relationships. So, that’s why I started reading, and when I was realizing that is was going to focus primarily on Wynonna and Dolls – sorry, Wynonna and Doc, and then even more so on Willa and Robert, I was like, “Why I am reading this? Wynonna – Waverly and Nicole are basically background characters. They’ve got this weird, kind of idealized domesticity going on. This is strange, like, I don’t –“

But then the other shoe dropped and it was like -

DELAYNE : Oh, my gosh.

DARKWICCAN : - “Okay, what just happened?!” [laughter] Okay.

DELAYNE : I was blown away myself. I – like I said, I was so thrown I just stopped taking notes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, you just put your pencil down and go, “Okay.” [laughter] Yeah.

DELAYNE : Pen down, just keep reading, I got to know what happens next.

DARKWICCAN : Really became, y'know, the equivalent of a page turner. Where it’s like, you get through a chapter, you gotta read the next chapter. Get through that chapter, you gotta read the next one, what’s going to happen next. And, yeah, we’re up to, I think, the climax, here in chapter fifteen, or the step right before the climax. And like I said, I think the next chapter’s going to be the ultimate show-down with the villain, the main villain, and then probably a day du mort, and resolution after that. But I was not anticipating this fic, this fic snuck up on me.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I’m glad I wasn’t the only one.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, not at all.

DELAYNE : I mean, after we see, I guess, a sort of a generic monster is brought in, and it kind of brought me back to – ‘cause we had just finished Get Lost – and I’m like, “Oh, this’ll interesting to see where this goes.” Was not prepared for where it went.

DARKWICCAN : Not at all, not at all. Takada did a fantastic job of misdirection. She really did. Yeah, she was waving her left hand, while she was messing around with her right, and did a great job of catching you going, “What just – what – what?!” So I – and as a result, I’m really looking forward to segment two today.

DELAYNE : Right? I’m curious how we’re – how it’s not going to get spoiled, I mean…

DARKWICCAN : Well, we’re just going to have to be careful about it, y'know. I did mention to Takada that I said I don’t want to give away the game because it’s such a brilliant, brilliant idea, and the way that she played it off is just so, so excellent. So, I think we’re all going to be sort of tip-toeing around things a little bit, but yeah, it’s going to be interesting.

So, yeah, Takada Saiko is our author who will be joining us for the interview segment today, we’re really excited to have her on, and to very carefully ask questions, and see how she came up with this idea, and especially to focus on Willa and Bobo. That’s the thing that really gets me, that the focus is on Willa and Bobo. That, for me, is so original.

DELAYNE : Right? I – now I’m going to have to look under that tag and see how many –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, I don’t think many -

DELAYNE : - have that as a relationship.

DARKWICCAN : - I can see right now. Let me see what we get. [laughter] There are nineteen. Nineteen, yeah.

DELAYNE : Out of two thousand five hundred fics?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, out over twenty-five hundred fics, there are nineteen. And boy, am I glad I stumbled onto this one. So, yeah, so after the break we will talk with Takada, but before we do that, we have to introduce this week’s [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Pickle Jar Rag (Hayley's Theme) by Erik Barone

DARKWICCAN : And welcome back everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my co-host:

DELAYNE : Delayne.

DARKWICCAN : And we are excited to be here today in our author interview portion with Takada Saiko, who we will call Jen today. She has graciously agreed to come on and chat with us. Jen, welcome to the show.

JEN : Hi, and thanks for having me.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, it’s thrilling to have you. I’ve – we were talking in segment one, Delayne and I, about how it’s actually kind of rare for us to come across not only straight ship fics, but fics that focus on Bobo, so this has been a fun kind of side trip for us, to –

DELAYNE : It’s also a great ensemble. I mean, you really, you cover everyone. So.

DARKWICCAN : It is. So, so let me ask you, how did you get into fanfiction?

JEN : Oh, goodness, that’s a very long time ago, more years than I’d actually like to admit to. I was apparently writing fanfiction before I knew what it was called, just I’d have show, or a book, or a movie that I like, I’d write a story, and then one time a friend goes, “You do realise there’s a name for that. There’s an entire site for that. You could be posting.” And I went, “Oh, okay.” And I fell down the deep, dark hole of fanfiction.net. So.

DELAYNE : Oh!

DARKWICCAN : Oh yes!

JEN : Back in the day.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] So, what was your first fandom to start writing fanfic for and posting online?

JEN : Oh, probably Gundan Ween. Yeah, I was a big anime fan back in high school. And that was the first one.

DARKWICCAN : So, what led you to _Wynonna Earp_?

JEN : Well, it’s kind of a twisty little path. My best friend watched it, and then a mutual friend of ours did some artwork for the comics, I think she did like, the first six – the artwork for the first six comics or so. So, I was like, “Well, I should probably give this show a shot, y'know, Laura’s in the middle of it, and Cara likes it, I should probably watch this.” And so, went in, binge watched the first season in about two days and fell in love with it.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Sounds about right.

DARKWICCAN : That’s about par for the course, yeah.

JEN : And the once I finished with that there was about a month, maybe two, before Season Two started, and Bobo was borderline my favorite at that point, I was like, “Well, I hope they bring him back someday.” So, I kind of casually watched the first half of Season Two, and then he popped out the snow like a daisy, and I fell down the rabbit hole.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : So, let’s talk about this fic of yours, about Such Great Heights.

DELAYNE : I’m curious, when you conceived of the story did -  I mean, it’s that domestic idyllic happiness of that first chapter, is that where it started, or did you kind of start maybe somewhere towards the aftermath?

JEN : No, it actually started with that. It’s – the way the idea came about was that I was reading a friend of mine’s fic, trying to remember what the name of it is, but kimmmons is the author, and Sweet Dreams Are Made of This, and her fic was this idea of Bobo having this dream of what would have happened if he hadn’t been cursed. And so she and I were talking about it, I was like, “That’s such a good idea.” And then I crawled into bed, to try to go to sleep, and all of a sudden my brain went crazy.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yes. Mhm, mhm, been there.

JEN : And I was sitting there sending her messages and going, “What have you done to me?” and telling her this idea, and she’s like, “Thank you, please write this.” [laughter] However many words later…

DARKWICCAN : So, kind of jumping off of that, alright, so it was really your friend who put the seed in your brain, and gave you the idea to focus this story on Bobo and Willa?

JEN : Well, I mean, I – Bobo and Willa is the ship that I didn’t really mean to ship. [laughter] ‘Cause, I mean, it’s a really twisted romance, it’s not – that’s saying it lightly. But I really love those two for what they could have been, because both of them have so much damage done to them over the years, especially with the curse. And they could have helped each other in that, and so Such Great Heights kind of gave me a way to allow them a chance without all that darkness, and without all that damage, to find what they could have had. And then follow that path, basically, and see where it lead them.

DARKWICCAN : So, give them everything they could have had, and then rip it away?

JEN : Yeah, yeah, that’s what I did. [laughter] When you put it like that!

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Well, I’m curious as – when you take it away, as to be as vague as possible – it seems very key that they retain that memory. So, I’m wondering, was there ever a point that you considered having them not remember at all, or maybe something in between?

JEN : No, not really. It’s – I really wanted it to be basically living two, y'know, they live two lives at this point. I don’t know if either of you, or any of the listeners, have seen Once Upon a Time, it’s on ABC, and that was kind of something I pulled from. I used to write for that fandom pretty regularly, and that idea of living – having two lives battering around in your head was something I really enjoyed from that, and so I kind of pulled for this story.

That it didn't – they’re not just the people that have lived under this curse, and just the people that have lived the lives we’ve seen in canon, they’ve also lived this entire other life, and how it’s going to influence them when they come out of this dream world. And so it shifts a lot of different relationships, it shifts who they are, y'know, as a person right then and there, and, I mean, it just opens up a lot doors and makes things really interesting for me as the writer to work with the characters when they’re having to face that, and also trying to muddle through what that means for them.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, to be faced with the sort of reality of, “well, this is what my life could have been, and to – how do I get that back? Given the circumstances I’m now finding myself in.”

JEN : And if some people can get it back, because, I mean, there are characters that, sure, they can get back what they lost, that’s – y'know, some characters have a better chance of getting back what they lost, versus others that basically feel like they were handed this, and given this ray of hope that they didn’t even know they wanted any more. And then it was ripped away, and that makes it that much harder for them to come back to reality.

DARKWICCAN : Right, exactly. Now, I noticed that Wynonna is the first to twig into something, something’s not quite right in their perfect world. Which, I mean, makes a lot of sense, because Wynonna is the titular character of the series, she is the main heroine, so she would be the one to, kind of, I think, be tipped off more quickly than anyone else. But how did you determine what would be the straw, essentially, that broke the camel’s back on the illusion?

JEN : Well, I mean, I knew it – because I went into this story knowing that I was going to center this around Bobo and Wynonna. And so I, for canon, I really have a lot of hope for an eventual friendship between them, that kind of forms, and so that’s something I enjoy writing, when I write stories, them being on the same side.

And so I knew one of them needed to spark it off. You have Bobo, that we saw in canon, that is more inclined to be able to see through these kind of spells, and then you have Wynonna that just pushes every boundary she finds, and, y'know, won’t take no for an answer. Y'know, she starts to see things, she’s going to push at it until she gets her answers that she needs.

And so, but, Bobo has the most to lose here. I mean, and I feel like Wynonna actually has the most to gain, because yes she has her little girl there, she has Doc, she has everything going well for her, but when she figures out what’s going on, she realises the Alice that she has there is not her Alice, and if she’s going to get back to her daughter, she needs to break out of this. While Bobo, on the other hand, if he were to realise this is all fake, then he loses the woman he loves, because Willa’s dead, and Gracie and little baby Wyatt never, y'know, basically never existed.

And that’s a big thing for him to lose, and so he really wasn’t the best option to be the one to chase that down and try to find that truth. It need to be Wynonna, and Wynonna needed to be the one to try to pull him into it.

DELAYNE : That makes sense.

DARKWICCAN : That makes absolute sense. Gosh, it’s like you’re, y'know, a competent writer or something.

[laughter]

JEN : I appreciate that, thank you. Yeah.

DELAYNE : I’m blown away with the way you write and the way you speak. Speaking of loses, I found it interesting, and of course especially as a Wayhaught hardcore shipper, how Waverly and Nicole don’t seem to suffer any loses in regards to their relationship with each other. Which is very clearly different to all the other pairings, so, I’m wondering if this was intentional, or if it just sort of happened that way?

JEN : I think a little bit of both, because the individual that cast the spell that is, y'know, trying to keep them all busy, basically, I mean, the whole point of it is to make them so happy, so complacent, that they’re not doing what Wynonna does, and going and looking for the truth. And so I think that, Y'know, Nicole and Waverly make each other happy, I mean, both in canon and in this story. So, instead of being in the earliest places of their relationship and, y'know, hiding DNA tests, and that sort of thing, y'know, freaking out at each other. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : We don’t speak of that here.

JEN : Y'know, those things. Y'know, they’re in a very solid place, they’re in a very loving relationship, and they’re just in a really good place. And Waverly is, y'know, barreling forward and Nicole is in a good spot as Sheriff, and they’re just happy, and they’re happy together, and happy as individuals.

And that’s kind of the point of this dream world is that they all get this what would be a happy, Y'know, quote unquote happy ending. And so that’s - I think that because of that really being together wouldn’t change for them, while Doc and Wynonna have this on-again-off-again thing. Willa’s dead, so obviously Bobo was not together with her in canon. [laughter] Yeah, makes it difficult.

Y'know, they have that in canon, in their reality, and so that didn’t really have to change for this story.

DARKWICCAN : So, kind of going further with that, then, safe to say that the idea behind Waverly’s mayoral campaign, that was a tactic of the story’s antagonist, to kind of keep her and Nicole too busy to notice that things weren’t right?

JEN : Definitely. I mean, that’s – she was – I had a lot of fun with Waverly as the heir, I feel like I didn’t get to dive as much into it as it could have been done, but she was younger than she should have been to be the heir, she was the third sister. As far as the dream world is concerned she was an Earp, because that’s something that she wanted, and so she was. That’s not even really an option in the dream world. And so, I mean, she’s already a Type A personality, and she’s pushing towards, y'know, and she ended the four-generation-long Earp curse in two years.

And so that ends, and she would get bored otherwise. I mean, she’s not going to sit there and just twiddle her thumbs, so going for mayor seemed like a good option that would give her something to do to better Purgatory, to help people, and, Y'know, everybody loves Waverly, everyone’s going to vote for Waverly.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Now she had the mayoral sash.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, she’d got a sash and everything.

JEN : The sash. [laughter] You know she’d win in a landslide.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, she totally would win, she absolutely would totally win. Okay, so you’ve got theses canonical pairings, you’ve got Wynonna and Doc, you’ve got Waverly and Nicole, you’ve got Bobo and Will, and then we’ve got poor Dolls, just kind of hanging out over here. Did you find yourself trying to figure out what you were going to do with him?

JEN : I did, he was one of the ones I had the most trouble with. Because I love Dolls in canon, but I just don’t write very often for him. And I’m a Wyndoc shipper, personally, and so, because I wanted to go that direction in this story, unlike – well, I don’t want him to just be pining after Wynonna, because that’s not going to make him happy, but I did want their friendship still, and so I just – I didn’t know, I didn’t have a romantic interest for him.

I mean, even Jeremy got a little bit of one, with Willa trying to get Bobo to hook Jeremy up with a guy at the school, y'know. And so, I’ve got a group of friends that I bounce ideas off of for various stories - a bunch of writers that we get together and we harass each other over stuff – and we were talking about it at one point, y'know, well, what can I do for Jeremy. Oh, y'know, there’s a teacher at Bobo’s school, okay. [laughter] Let’s get this poor boy a boy – bleh – poor guy a boyfriend, y'know.

DARKWICCAN : Or this poor boy a guyfriend. Y'know, either way. [laughter]

JEN : I can’t words tonight, I’m sorry. [laughter] But, with Dolls I just, I was like, okay, well, y'know, he can be a war hero, an actually acclaimed war hero, he’s still got the Black Badge Division, he’s actually acknowledged for what he does. But otherwise, not a lot changed with him, and I kind of regret that, I wish I had had something more to add to him, but it just never really fell out that way when I was writing.

DELAYNE : You have to go where the story tells you.

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely. But no notion to make you bring Eliza back and give him some action on the side there?

DELAYNE : Oh, my god.

JEN : No. [laughter] I – I never connected, really, with Eliza. Like, I don’t dislike her or anything, I just, she was there and then she was dead, y'know?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. She was around for one episode. She was, uh…

DELAYNE : [laughter] I’m sorry. Yeah.

JEN : The underwear fight.

DELAYNE : As a lesbian, I really enjoyed the underwear fight. I’m just going to put that out there.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, she did have excellent taste in underwear, so. [laughter] So, as you were putting together your ideas for the perfect Purgatory, did you have any that ended up on the cutting room floor that were just a little to touchest, [sic] or too perf, [sic] or anything like that?

JEN : I don’t think so. Not – I mean, I had a lot of various things that I bounced around with. One thing I liked was Ward actually ended a lot better dad in this. ‘Cause, like, I really dislike Ward in general. [laughter] From what we know of the man, it kind of sounded like he was a really, really crappy dad to Waverly. I haven’t quite forgiven him for that yet.

DARKWICCAN : None of us have.

JEN : Yeah, I don’t think I’m alone there. And so, like, that was something I really wanted. He actually did not die from a Revenant attack, he died in a car wreck, and he was – once he found out Waverly was going to be the heir, he treated her like a queen.

And that also gave Waverly and Willa a chance, maybe not to be as close as Waverly and Wynonna, or Willa and Wynonna were, but they don’t – they’re not angry at each other, there’s no trying to, y'know, kill her via falling through the ice, y'know.

Willa is just a better person in general because she doesn’t have this huge weight on her as a child. I mean, she’s not being woken up at four o’clock in the morning by her drunken father dragging her out to shoot, y'know, that’s going to warp any kid growing up that way.

And Waverly enjoys it and Ward’s just a better person in it, he goes about it better, he handles Waverly differently than in canon he handled Willa. And so I just liked that. If I had my druthers, this is what Ward would have been like.

And Bobo wouldn’t have had to do his job for him, y'know? [laughter] When the demon is a better dad to your little girl, there’s something wrong.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. Maybe need to take a step back and re-assess your priorities. [laughter]

JEN : So.

DELAYNE : I am curious about – ‘cause I know I was never able to write kids until I had a nephew, and one of my favourite stories – ‘cause my wife and I, he’s always called us both “Aunt”, y'know, “Auntie” – and my other brother had brought his girlfriend and I think my nephew was about four at the time and, since my wife and I were both Auntie, and my brother was Uncle, then was my brother’s girlfriend was also Uncle to him. And that is – [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : I love kids.

DELAYNE : I definitely notice that, y'know, in that first scene that it was Auntie Waverly, but not Aunt Nicole, and, y'know, for a moment there, y'know, I paused, like, “Oh, that kinda hurts me a little bit” and then, y'know, you didn’t write them as married, but then the changes happen and I’m kinda glad maybe that they weren’t married just yet, so.

JEN : Yeah, I mean, but I think that there’s a point in there that when Willa finds out that they’re having a little boy and she’s going to talk to Waverly about being the godmother, she does make sure to tell Nicole, y'know, “Hey, you guys haven’t tied the knot yet, but you’re family. So, you’re both in this.” Y'know, she’s very much accepted into their clan, there’s no –

DELAYNE : I appreciated that, yes. Thank you.

JEN : - no question about that with anybody. I guess she never did call her Aunt Nicole. I – at least in my brain Nicole’s just as much her Aunt as Waverly. I don’t know why she never did in the story, but, I mean, at least in my brain she’s just as much. [laughter] And so…

DARKWICCAN : Well, maybe eventually real Alice will –

JEN : Yes, there we go.

DARKWICCAN : - or real Gracie – there we go, yeah. [laughter] Y'know, I hadn’t noticed that.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I pick up weird stuff, don’t mind me.

DARKWICCAN : Well, that’s why we keep you around.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Oh, I don’t know how to respond to that.

DARKWICCAN : My work here is done, I left Delayne speechless again.

DELAYNE : It’s not that hard.

DARKWICCAN : Which of the three couples did you find yourself having the most difficulty writing, if any of them?

JEN : Oh, goodness. I don’t know. Wynonna and Doc is stubborn. Once the spell breaks they got really hard for me to write. ‘Cause I ship it, really hard, but Wynonna’s just so freakishly stubborn about relationships. [laughter] And, y'know, acknowledging feelings sometimes. And so, she gets very hyper focused on y'know, that the dream world was a lie, that was forced on me, y'know, it wasn’t my choice to marry you, that was something that was pushed on me. And Doc’s over here going, “I wasn’t the only one that that was happy, y'know, happily ever after, y'know, I’m not the only one here.” But, basically, it took both of them to create that little pocket of that world, which it did, and she comes around to that eventually, but it was like pulling teeth getting her there.

DELAYNE : I think that worked really well though, because it came across how resistant Wynonna was, so I think that worked out for you.

DARKWICCAN : It was definitely in character.

JEN : Oh, good!

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

JEN : I’m glad it came across.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, it was definitely in character, that is – because, yeah, Wynonna just doesn’t like to be tied down. She is not a traditionalist in that sense. So, I think it made absolute sense that once she was free of the spell she was like, “Now, wait a minute!” [laughter]

JEN : Well, like I – just what you said, she’s not a traditionalist, and so I think it would really freak her out, the idea of marrying Doc. And there’s a point, I don’t remember which chapter it was in, but she’s mulling it over and thinking about it, and she realises that idea of what it would be to marry him, and what it acutally was in this dream world are entirely different. Y'know, that she’s – her concept of what, y'know, because this is what society says marriage is. But their marriage was very different than that, and so it was something that enjoyed, that she was happy with there. Because it was theirs, not what other people would want for them.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely. Very – a strangely – well, one of those loving, antagonistic relationships, with a lot of aggressive sarcasm and teasing that goes back and forth, but that’s their way of saying that they love each other.

JEN : I feel sorry for Doc sometimes, she does send a lot of mixed signals his way. [laughter] I’m just like, it’s okay buddy, y'know?

DARKWICCAN : Y'know, Doc maybe is a guy who likes being kept on his toes, who knows.

JEN : There you go. He obviously is still attracted to her, so.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

JEN : Still likes.

DARKWICCAN : Well, he’s all in, right? He’s all in. That’s his _raison d’être_.

DELAYNE : A lot of times when I read fics I will quote a lot. And actually, I took very few notes ‘cause I was just so blown away, but I did write one line: “Promises in the dark don’t usually stand up in the light.” What a line, oh my gosh.

JEN : Well, that comes from, I – Willa makes a comment in the Season One finale, she said that someone came whispering promises in the dark to her. And we still don’t know who that was. I mean, I guess it potentially could have been Mip - Mitshun – I can never say the name –

DARKWICCAN : Mikshun.

JEN : Is that how you say it? I don’t –

DELAYNE : Mikshun.

JEN :  - I still can’t say it.

DARKWICCAN : MIk. Mikshun. Mikshun.

JEN : The old demon!

DELAYNE : And that’s what I assumed, too.

JEN : But, I mean, it couldn’t get in until that gate was open, so it’s possible it was someone else, and so I went with it, in this story, that it was Clootie. That it was Bulshar whispering to her from his grave. Y'know, whispering to her and trying to manipulate her because not only is she the Earp heir, but she’s also with Robert. And so, who I think that – I mean, the man took a bullet to put in the ground and, y'know, died to keep him there. So I doubt Bulshar is a big fan of Bobo Del Ray.

And so, that’s kind of the direction I went, was that that was Clootie, that was whispering to her in the dark, and manipulating her, and taking those already dark thoughts with everything that’s happened to her in her life, and just twisting them up a little bit more, and manipulating those. And so, when she has to face him in this story, and actually, y'know, come face to face with him, she realises just what he is.

And the fact that she’s seen Bobo as – much more as he was prior to the curse, I mean, because she’s – I mean, in canon she never saw that. She saw the Revenant Bobo Del Ray, even if he’s softer with her he’s still has had, y'know, eighty-some odd years of curse that he’s lived under, not to mention at least one trip, y'know, thirty years in hell, or something like that, between the day he died and the day that Wyatt died and the curse began? I mean, so, he already had all of that, y'know, charring of his soul by that point.

And so this is the first time she’s seen, physically seen the man that he was, I think it brings to light exactly what Clootie did to him by dragging him into this curse. And she just hates him for it.

DARKWICCAN : Hundred percent agree with you there, hundred percent. So Jen, you create this dream world that then dissolves into the real world, and everybody’s gotta kind of deal with that, and for the most – third one is staying true to character, we talked earlier about how Wynonna really snaps to her true character and wanting to be very stubborn and not [laughter] not commit to her commitment to Doc. Were there any characters that you found were behaving out of character, but it made sense within the storyline?

JEN : Oh, I think Willa did a lot of growing because of the situation. Like I mentioned earlier one of the fun things that happened with this is she basically got kind of a re-write to a super traumatic childhood, and it gave her a chance to approach life without all of this weight on her shoulders that she’s had.

Both she and Bobo got that because he’s not under the curse, she’s not the Earp heir, so they both get this weight lifted off of them, and it turned out that Willa became very protective, and so she distanced herself from the Earp curse, not necessarily from her family, but from anything having to do with the curse. She goes and marries this, like, super sweet man that, y'know, doesn’t have any links to the curse and – but she’s also very scared that he’s going to get dragged into it, because I think it would just be a natural thing for any Earp at all, I  mean, ‘cause at this point, as weird as it with Waverly being the heir, the third child, y'know, if she hadn’t broken the curse they would have no idea if Willa’s kids were gonna be the heir if Waverly’s kids were gonna be the heir, if Wynonna’s children were gonna be – y'know, they wouldn’t know what was happening next. And so, she sort of takes as many steps back as she feels like she can to protect this innocent family of hers that she’s building.

And one of my favorite things that happened, that just kind of sparked up from it, was that she became – like, protective Willa became my jam in this. [laughter] She, y'know, every time that Robert got himself into trouble, she just, y'know, was ready to kill anything that coming at him. [laughter] And he’s over there just like, “Breathe, honey.” Y'know?

DELAYNE : It must be a family trait, because, y'know, we see in canon how Wynonna is very protective over Waverly, trying to keep her out of it, so, I think it’s very believable.

JEN : Yeah, and so, I mean, it basically, it just opened up the ability for me to work with Willa not being such a… damaged human being. [laughter] Looking for that word there.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : You were looking for the word “bitch.” It’s alright, it’s okay.

[laughter]

JEN : It’s funny, I have a friend from a different fandom that she said, “Okay, I finally caught up on Season One of Wynonna Earp, and I hate Willa.” And I was like, I get where you’re coming from, but I also get like why she’s this way, and why all of this happened, it’s like, I love her for what she could have been, and oh, I wish they would have done that, but, y'know, she served her purpose for the story that’s being told, and so. I do hope that eventually, maybe, we could get flashbacks or something from her. I personally am dying to know about the treehouse years and what all goes into that, ‘cause I have more questions than I should for that segment. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Boy, I totally agree with you, because – so she was up in a treehouse, she couldn’t have left? Like, Bobo wasn’t with her all the time, clearly he was just kind of dropping in, so why couldn’t’ she just leave? She was a resourceful Earp.

JEN : Well, I think she could have, I mean, ‘cause that’s something that Constance said to her when she, quote unquote, freed her, she said, “Don’t you know what freedom is? It means you can leave? You’re free to leave.” I think that Willa at some point chose to stay for Bobo, I mean, ‘cause y'know, I understand at thirteen you’re not going to send a kid to the line, I mean, CPS just would have brought her right back, y'know, she would have been found out as a runaway.

But, y'know, if she hit eighteen, nineteen years old, he could have taken her to the line and said, “Good luck.” Y'know, if that’s all he was trying to do was save her life, and at that point she probably she would have come back for him at twenty-seven and walked across the line. And –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

JEN : - but, and so something kept her there, and so my personal headcanon is, y'know, around twenty, twenty-one, somewhere in there, she started developing feelings, y'know, romantic feelings for him, and said , “I’m not going anywhere unless you can go with me.” And, y'know, he eventually gave into – [laughter] to all that. I – my headcanon that I run with, ‘cause, like I mentioned earlier, it’s such a potentially warped relationship, there’s so many questions there, it almost had to be that Willa instigated everything. Because he’s very much a gentlemen with her, I mean, for Bobo Del Ray, and all the things that he does, he’s very gentle with her, he’s – the hand kiss is still one of my favorite scenes in the entire show.

DARKWICCAN : Do you think there’s an element of Stockholm Syndrome in there?

JEN : I don’t, mostly because, y'know, that adds way to many warped layers for me to be comfortable with. [laughter] Horrible thing to admit. But, I mean, the whole thing is just super complicated. I don’t think that Bobo ever tried to hurt her, if that makes sense. Like, I don’t think he went into it – I think that he got caught up in a really bad situation in which they were never supposed to take her.

What was he gonna do about it, y'know? They were going to kill her, and so he said that he killed her, and if they had seen that he hadn’t it would have put him in a very bad situation, I think, ‘cause I get the impression the Seven were never really one hundred percent under his control. That was always kind of an iffy situation. And if he looked like he was trying to save an Earp it probably would have gotten a lot worse.

DARKWICCAN : That makes sense.

DELAYNE : You raise a lot of interesting points.

JEN : I do a lot of thinking about Bobo.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, somebody’s go to.

JEN : I wished – he’s one of two characters, and I joke that, like, with all the meta that I write about these characters in each fandom, it’s like I could have a degree in this character. I have an English Lit degree, and so, y'know, I spent years in college learning how to pick apart characters and put them back together, I just chose when I do it for fandom. I have degree in fandom.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Wouldn’t that be nice, oh my gosh.

JEN : I mean, technically, that’s kind of what it is. I mean, because I spent years doing that, where they basically just hand you a book and go, “Okay, pick it apart, tell us what it’s about.” And that’s what I do in fandom, that’s what I enjoy the most in it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I don’t have any fancy schmancy [ph] degrees – I wish I did – but I also tend to wordsmith pieces almost to a point where I – where they become dust. [laughter] But I do like to dig in and pick apart.

Well, Jen, we have had so much fun talking with you today that we have actually run over time. So, I’m going to cut this – not short, ‘cause we’ve run long – but I’m going to had the table over to Delayne so she can ask you the final question that we ask all of our guests. Delayne?

DELAYNE : So, you’re stranded on desert island, and you can only have one fanfic to read. What is it?

JEN : Okay, so, this question is really, really rough, because I have way too many fanfiction pieces that I love.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : That’s why we ask it!

JEN : I know, it’s horrible. I think – ‘cause I have so many friends that write, and they’re such fantastic writers, it’s like how do you choose between their works? If I had to choose one, it’s ShadowManShenanigans, over on AO3. It’s called “a little bit of peace (in a bathtub's embrace)”. And so, it’s – it has some really cool scenes, basically Bobo takes an evening to himself to kind of re-group in the big city, goes takes a long bath, does a lot of thinking. And ends up chatting, at some point, with a descendant of his that lives in the big city. It’s just – there’s a lot of cool little pieces there.

DARKWICCAN : Nice.

JEN : But that – I feel like it’s got a balance of angsty stuff, and happy stuff, and y'know, thoughtful stuff, it’s got a little bit of everything.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome. So one more time, title and author?

JEN : It’s “a little bit of peace (in a bathtub's embrace)” and the author is ShadowManShenanigans.

DARKWICCAN : I love that author’s name. [laughter] That’s a great name.

JEN : I think they actually started out on Tumblr, I’ve got a couple of people that will leave anons in my inbox over on Tumblr of full stories. They’re fantastic, I love these people so much, and ShadowManShenanigans I think started that way. As far as I know they don’t have – I assume they may have a Tumblr, but that’s the only interaction I’ve had with them on Tumblr. But they did create an AO3 account and start posting stuff over there, and I was super excited when they did that.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome, we’ll definitely be linking to that in our show notes, for sure. Well, Jen, thank you so much for coming on and chatting with us this Sunday evening, it’s been so much fun chatting with you.

JEN : Oh, it was a lot of fun, thanks, I’m really excited you guys reached out, its – you guys have a fantastic podcast here.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for listening!

Huge thanks to Takada Saiko, aka Jen, for coming on to chat with us about her work, “Such Great Heights”. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story and Surviving in Exile by Darren Korb; Pickle Jar Rag (Hayley's Theme) by Erik Barone; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Maddigan

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast
> 
> We're also on iTunes!


	11. Home On the Range

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Giddy-up! This week DW and Delayne strap on their chaps and Stetsons and get to work corralling a small herd of "Ranch AU' fics.
> 
> Afterwards, they rustle up a conversation with author PostScript8 aka Lady Bobo(!) aka Lindsay to chat about her fic!

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://http://efapodcast.com/home-on-the-range)

 

Read the Fics!

[Mustang](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11635482) by sarahqwilson 

[From Hell to Purgatory](https://t.co/lWYNlD5R1Q) by BootsnCatz 

[Come Sundown](https://t.co/wiSPWR4aBu) by Half

[Into the Wild Series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/798486) by Postscript8 

 

  
  


 

  
PostScript8's Desert Island Fic: [Open Range Hearts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7353505) by thewaywedo33 

 

Bonus!! Lindsay as Lady Bobo:

 

Transcript for the Deaf and HOH by Flying Fanatic!

 

EFA EPISODE 11 – HOME ON THE RANGE

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Hey everyone and welcome to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction, I am your host DarkWiccan and with me, as always, is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And this week we are sitting in our separate recording studios wearing chaps and cowboy hats. [laughter] And nothing else! No, I’m kidding. [louder laughter] Dude. What a way to start the show. [laughter]

DELAYNE : I will _not_ be providing a picture of that. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, neither will I. [laughter]

DELAYNE : Yee-haw!

DARKWICCAN : Yee-haw. We are – and why are we dressed this way, you ask, even though you cannot see us? Because this week we are talking about Ranch AUs. Ranch alternative universe fics in the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom. And we have a whopping four fics to discuss with you today.

DELAYNE : Not just four, but four rather lengthy multi-chapter fics.

DARKWICCAN : This is true, this is true. And we had read these fics beforehand but we always go back and do a re-read, and I think both of us were shocked.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : It was a daunting reading assignment, yes, I did not realize how much – but I made it through!

DARKWICCAN : We made it through!

DELAYNE : Because we have read them before -

DARKWICCAN : Yes we have, so it was really –

DELAYNE : - we just need a little bit of reminding.

DARKWICCAN : - more a refresh. But – and I have to admit, one of my choices, I cheated a little bit and it was less of a Ranch and more of a Wild West, but they are on the ranch, gosh darn it, so I stand by that.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : That’s okay. I actually like the variety with our group here because, like you said, the Old West. The other three are, y'know, contemporary, but we’ve got one with a little bit of side of _Law and Order_.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : We’ve got – well, y'know, we’ve got bar fights.

DARKWICCAN : We got bar fights, but, y'know, that’s par for the course. Yeah, but – as you say, we’ve got the _Law and Order_ ish one, we’ve got the summer coming-of-age one –

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - and then we’ve got the estranged family coming together one. So, y'know, they’re different, they all have a unique take on the Ranch.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So, why don’t we kick things of. In fact, even better, I got an even better idea. Delayne, why don’t _you_ kick things off?

DELAYNE : So, my first choice is ‘Mustang’ by sarahqwilson, and this is the one I was talking about with – it’s a contemporary Ranch AU, with a side of a _Law and Order_ trial -

[ _Law and Order_ ‘dun-dun’ sound effect]

DELAYNE : - going on in the back – [laughter]  I was not expecting that, that was great.

DARKWICCAN : I can tell. [laughter]

DELAYNE : It is rated M, and there is a warning, trigger warning: there are mentions of rape. So, it is a very heavy sort of – it’s a very heavy fic.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, this one was one where we kind of had to decide are we going to rec it, because one of our very few, limited rules, as far as fics that we recommend, is that we won’t recommend fics that have graphic depictions of rape. And, the thing is, ‘Mustang’ doesn’t cross that line at all.

DELAYNE : Right. Some mentions of – I guess they do – there’s a few details about it, but’s its not –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s more of a memory of the episode, or the incident, and nothing’s described in heavy detail, it’s all, yeah.

DELAYNE : But onto happier notes!

DARKWICCAN : Yes!

[laughter]

[Law and Order ‘dun-dun’ sound effect]

[louder laughter]

DELAYNE : God damn you. [laughter] I – you know me and my I-gotta-write-down-these-quotes, because they’re fantastic and I identify with them for some reason.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm.

DELAYNE : So when Wynonna tells Waverly, “Only you would work really hard, just to finish quicker, so you can do more work.”

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : And I feel that describes me so well.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, completely accurate, mhm, mhm. Correct me if I’m wrong: the premise of ‘Mustang’ is that Waverly is returning home to the ranch, after having left for college, and she’s only returning because her Uncle Curtis has passed away.

DELAYNE : Right, and that was one thing when I first read the tags, and I hadn’t quite caught the Ranch AU part, I thought maybe this was a canon, where it was just Waverly had been the one gone instead of Wynonna. But, I was clearly wrong, ‘cause it’s definitely Ranch AU. So in this one, when Waverly comes home Nicole is already established at the ranch. She’s fairly new, but she’s been there, and she is good friends with her BroTP, Wynonna.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. This was an excellent example of the Wynaught BroTP. And, in fact, Gus even comments on the fact that Nicole has been good for Wynonna, in that I think she says something like, “Nicole is the only reason why Wynonna is still vertical most nights.”

DELAYNE : As – yeah, as Waverly watches Nicole grab Wynonna and pull her off to safety. She’s drowned and drooping.

DARKWICCAN : What am I not remembering?

DELAYNE : That when she first sees Nicole, Wynonna is drunk and Nicole is literally picking her up, keeping her vertical, when Gus makes that mention.

DARKWICCAN : So, the _Law and Order_ aspect comes into play in this story, not – well, it comes into play from Nicole. But not because Nicole is a deputy, or a sheriff, or anything like that. It’s because – well, Nicole’s just a ranch hand – the _Law and Order_ part comes in in that her father is on trial for the murder of her mother and brother, so there is this sort of B plot that exists within the storyline, where we’re following the progress of that trial.

DELAYNE : Yeah, and it actually shows scenes of the trial, with the prosecutor, and the defense attorney, and –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And so it’s really kind of interesting, the way that Sarah Wilson sort of frames those sequences, because instead of treating them like a typical sort of narrative, she sets them up to be almost like the transcription you would read from a court clerk’s stenotype machine. So, it’s basically just, almost written like a script, you have the name of the person speaking, a colon, and then their line of dialougue, and so on and so forth. So it makes those scenes move rather quickly, but it also adds a element of – well, not reality, I mean yes reality –

DELAYNE : An element of TV magic?

DARKWICCAN : No.

[Law and Order ‘dun-dun’ sound effect]

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : No. No, it adds an element of – yeah, I guess reality, or legitimacy, to what you’re reading. It feels like you’re reading a court room transcript, so.

DELAYNE : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But there’s other stuff going on too.

DELAYNE : Oh, there’s so much going on with this, it really – it’s a lot.

DARKWICCAN : It’s a lot, y'know, like we talking before started recording, Delayne, and one thing I mentioned was that reading ‘Mustang’ was really to me almost like reading a full television series season arc. But not like thirteen episode series, like a twenty-four episode, year-long series arc, because there’s just so many threads that pick up and get, y'know, tied off, and then move on to next plot, and – I mean, it’s fun, it was a lot of fun, it was like, okay, well we’ve kind of wrapped that up, but we’ve still got this other thread dangling out there, how are we gonna resolve that? And, y'know, that thread continues on, and we pick up a new one, and those two sort of intertwine with each other, and, yeah. It’s – the one thing I didn’t like, though –

DELAYNE : Oh!?

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah. Is that there were there sort of interstitial chapters that were essentially songfics.

DELAYNE : I did notice that. I was wondering if you were gonna say anything.

DARKWICCAN : I debated bringing it up, I did. But I have to say that it – every time one of those chapters popped up it kind of pull me out of the story a bit. Because it wasn’t really advancing the story? I mean, I guess you could, like I said, they’re more interstitial chapters, so, you can kind of skip ‘em, really. And it’s fine. Eh.

DELAYNE : No, I agree, I did tend to read through those a little quickly. It did – it broke it up in not necessarily a positive way.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it was one of those things where I couldn’t – I honestly cannot decide if they were a good break, or a distracting break. And I think part of it just because I was, again, having to re-read rather quickly, so, part of me would get to those and I’d be like, “Oh, thank goodness, I can kind of skip this chapter.” [laughter] That’s a terrible thing to say. Sarahqwilson, we love your story. We love it. Just had this one issue with it. But, again, this story is very sweeping, it covers a whole lot of topics, and plots, and really ties them all up –

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - beautifully, and we get to a very nice, sweet, lovely little happy ending. Which I won’t give away.

DELAYNE : Like a season ender.

DARKWICCAN : Like a season or a series ender, yeah, yeah.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : That’s basically ‘Mustang’. Would you say?

DELAYNE : As succinctly as we could not put it, yes.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Fair. Okay, okay, so, moving on. Yeah. Moving on to my first choice, which is ‘From Hell to Purgatory’ by Bootsncatz. And this is the one where, I admit, I cheated a little bit, because it’s really more of a Wild West fic. But I stand by what I said before, it takes place on the ranch, it takes place on the Earp Ranch, for the most part, and daggummit [ph]. And it’s a really good story, it is so good.

So, essentially, it’s a period piece, it takes place in the Old West. And it does have elements of magic, and witchcraft, and demons, and all that stuff. So, essentially, Wynonna hires Nicole to be a bodyguard for Waverly, to protect Waverly. And the reason why Waverly requires protection is because Willa has died, and because Willa has died, all the Revenants that she managed to kill have regenerated. And, of course, they’re gonna be gunning for the Earps, and Wynonna’s number one priority here, as always, is Waverly’s safety. So, she hires bounty hunter Nicole. Which I just pictured: Nicole like Clint Eastwood, Spaghetti Western style. [laughter]

Which is such a lovely image, so lovely, in fact, that VeryScaryKrystal [sic] actually drew a version of that for her and Diana Benitez’s ‘Twelve Months of Haughtmas’ calendar. So, I’m going to include a link to that image. [laughter]

But, like so many of Bootzncatz works, it is incredibly creative, and it grasps you right from the get-go, and you’re just kind of along for the ride. And it is so much fun to follow Wynonna, and Waverly, and Nicole through this mire of evil that they’re trying to defeat.

And boy, let me tell you what, there is serious tag on this one, it’s a – there are two major tags on this. Or what they call Archive Warnings.

DELAYNE : Oh, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : The first one is Graphic Depictions of Violence. Meh, it’s Wynonna Earp, sure, no problem. The other is Major Character Death. Whaaat? Yeah, Major Character Death.

DELAYNE : And as a person who tends to - as much as I encourage everyone to read the tags – I forget sometimes.

DARKWICCAN : Let me tell you, it is a _major_ character death. When it happened, the first time I read this story, when it happened, I literally stood up from my seat – luckily I was at home – I literally stood up from my seat, pointed down at my laptop and went, “The hell you say!” [laughter] And I had to take a break, ‘cause I was just like I couldn’t believe that she had done it, I could not believe that she had done it. Now, she makes up for it, but those –

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : - that period of time, from that major character death, to when it’s sorted out? Oh, my chest hurt, it was oh god, whew. It was so difficult to read. I know listeners are going, “What the hell is she going on about, she’d not being specific at all.” Well, of course I can’t tell you who the character is that dies, and of course I can’t tell you what happens in the chapters before it gets fixed – it does get fixed.

DELAYNE : [laughter] That’s the important point.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. But, I just, I – oh. If you can handle some hurts-so-good. [laughter] If you can handle the hurts-so-good, and I mean _hurts_ , I urge you strongly to read this fic.

DELAYNE : Should I feel bad that I don’t – I guess I wasn’t as affected by it, but –

DARKWICCAN : You weren’t!? You cold-hearted beast.

DELAYNE : I – I guess I knew it would sort itself out in the end, so it’s –

DARKWICCAN : I knew that too, I knew that too, it didn’t make what happened next particularly comfortable, or comforting.

DELAYNE : Well, okay, you have a point there, yeah. It was still rough, but I mean, you are _seriously_ affected.

DARKWICCAN : Well, yeah, I mean, I got feelings. [laughter] Okay, so now we’re up to your next pick, right, Delayne?

DELAYNE : Yes. It is ‘Come Sundown’ by Half.

DARKWICCAN : Ah, Half, yeah, Half is one of those prolific authors that generally does pretty high quality work, and we’ve talked about her work before, and had her on the show.

DELAYNE : Yes! And one thing she does particularly well with this one is her summary. And I’m just going to read it for you, because it is a great example of giving you just what you need, without giving you too much, like I tend to do.

DARKWICCAN : Just enough without over-explaining it.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Exactly. So the summary is: “When their father dies, the estranged Earp sisters return to the family ranch. Locked into an inheritance that forces them to live together and stuck on a ranch under siege, the trio will have to learn how to unite- or risk losing everything.”

DARKWICCAN : That is an excellent summary. Sums it up nicely.

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And that’s – I want to speak to the first part of that, in that the Earp sisters are estranged. And so what that looks like is Willa has grown up basically by herself on the ranch, whereas Waverly and Wynonna each have different mothers - they had the same father, Ward – but they had different mothers, so they grew up with their mothers, Wynonna in one place, and Waverly in another. So, they really don’t know each other at all. They are true strangers to one another.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : But what I found really enjoyable was how when we first see Wynonna and Waverly meet they instantly get along like a house on fire, to the point where they immediately get into a bar fight, that they win. [laughter] And it’s because of these shenanigan that Gus, at Shorty’s, is able to I.D. them immediately as the Earps. [laughter]

DELAYNE : Right? So, we have Gus grabbing them by the scruff of their necks and like –

DARKWICCAN : By their shirt collars, and shoving them out the door, yeah.

DELAYNE : [laughter] And this ranch, man, everyone is – and this ranch is called Peacemaker Ranch. You’ve got Gus working there, she’s kind of the house mom, and you have Doc, and Dolls, Shorty. You even have Champ works on this ranch.

DARKWICCAN : Ugh.

DELAYNE : [laughter] It is a little different at – well, you have Robert Svane, he does have a ranch, this time it’s called Del Ray Ranch, I like that. And then, well, Chrissy works on the ranch as well, Randy is the Sheriff, and Nicole, she rides up on a motorcycle a few chapters in, and it turns out, she is Chrissy’s sister and Randy Nedley’s step-daughter.

DARKWICCAN : And they make an adorable family unit, let’s be honest.

DELAYNE : Yes, and then another important fact about Nicole, some interesting Nicole backstory, is that she is a veteran, she does have some medals and awards, and she does – she comes back to be a deputy for Randy because, essentially, she doesn’t know what to do with herself, like a lot of people who have left the service. It’s very deep in that aspect.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and not only is she a veteran but she is a medaled veteran, and she doesn’t like to think about it. Which, I mean, the circumstances behind her receiving her Silver Star are pretty, pretty sad.

DELAYNE : Yeah. But it’s definitely an interesting part to the storyline, and adds a lot of depth to Nicole’s character.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I like the fact that Nicole doesn’t know what she wants, whereas on the series Nicole’s essential thesis statement is “When I see something I like, I don’t wanna wait.” So she definitely knows what she wants. But this Nicole has been through a trauma, and has been a bit aimless, and –

DELAYNE : A little bit lost. But then we get some, of course, back to the summary, where we have “a ranch under siege,” some stuff starts happening, and it gets a little interesting.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it gets a little bit – not, I wouldn’t say – well, yes, scary, I guess, if you’re living the experience it’s a bit scary, stuff starts going awry. This – the main sort of driving story arc here is the battle for the ranch, and not just within the Earp family itself. Essentially, the situation is that Willa – the ranch won’t stay in the family if the sisters don’t live together on the property for a year. And because this is Willa’s home, this is where she grew up, this is all she know, she’s pretty frigging pissed. Because these two women who she doesn’t know, who just happen to be related to her because their dad, y'know, slept around a bit, are now holding her livelihood in their hands. So Willa is a bit of a bitch.

DELAYNE : I wondered if we were going to like her or not. It was not clear, right away.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it wasn’t clear, like you didn’t really know if you could trust Willa.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : And I found that to be very interesting within the story dynamic, because you have Waverly and Wynonna, who are genuinely trying to do the right thing, they truly are, they might not be great at it, but they’re really trying to do the right thing. And then you’ve got a very antagonistic, negative, y'know, angry Willa, who is just sniping off at them left, right, and center, and just is acting like the last thing she wants in the world is to be around these people.

And you start to wonder if she is maybe the reason why these things that are happening on the ranch, that are, y'know, go from - that are anywhere from an annoyance that needs attention, to truly, truly, truly bad. I was going to say catastrophic, but not really, it’s not actually, the things that happen – nothing that happens is truly in the zone of catastrophe. But they’re not good, they’re bad, they’re very, very bad things. So you start to wonder, hey, is this Willa behind it, and, y'know, we find out about Willa and Robert’s relationship to each other, and Robert wanting to, y'know – the reason why he also wants a piece of the Earp land, and so we have that as sort of the major catalyst for driving the story forward.

And we do get a resolution at the end, and it a very, very satisfying resolution for all parties involved, except for those who don’t win. [laughter] But it is a good, well thought-out story. I don’t know what else to say about it.

And it just so happens that Wayhaught’s in there, and they’re great.

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : So, yeah, so that’s ‘Come Sundown’ by Half, you should totally read it. And now we approach my second pick for today’s show, and that is ‘Girl in a Country Song’ by Postscript8. And ‘Girl in a Country Song’ is the first part of a two-part series currently in progress. The overall title of the series is ‘Into the Wild’, and ‘Girl in a Country Song’ is part one.

And the thing that makes ‘Girl in a Country Song’ unique compared to the other three stories that we’ve talked about today is it is really just a – well, I say just, that’s really not – it’s just this thing - no it’s not, it is simply a love story, beautifully told. It is a love story, and a coming of age story, and it takes place the summer before Waverly is set to leave for college. And the premise is that it’s her last summer on the ranch before she goes off into the world, and a college student who is looking to earn hands-on credit is taking a job as a ranch hand on the Earp Ranch for the summer, and of course that is Nicole Haught.

And we spend these lovely nine chapters watching Nicole and Waverly grow closer to one another and ultimately fall in love, and have that summer romance, and then we see the summer come to an end. And it’s just very lovely.

DELAYNE : You know what else is lovely?

DARKWICCAN : Mmm?

DELAYNE : I love Gus and Curtis’s relationship. I know –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah.

DELAYNE : - it is very brief, in that – I think that first chapter, y'know, when Waverly runs into Nicole – but their interaction is so sweet. It’s as sweet as the rest of the fic, honestly.

DARKWICCAN : This is a sweet-tooth fic, for sure. You might need to get checked for cavities after. [laughter] But it’s so worth the indulgence.

DELAYNE : Yes. There are also other interesting relationship dynamics in this. Doc and Wynonna, with their on-again, off-again relationship. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Mhm. Yes. It’s very volatile, but it’s so them.

DELAYNE : Right? But this – their relationship leads to one of my favorite scenes, which is the date to the county fair. Well, Waverly, of course, is with Champ at the beginning, so she’s with her date, Champ, to the country fair. Wynonna happens to be off-again with Doc at that moment, so Nicole goes ahead and takes her to the fair as her date.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Which, I mean, like, not in any way truly her date –

DELAYNE : No.

DARKWICCAN : Not in any way truly –

DELAYNE : No. [laughter] ‘Cause they’re friends, they’re good friends, it’s a great BroTP, and it seems like the kind of thing that they would do, like, “Oh, if you’re not with anyone, sure, I’ll take you.” But Nicole, even the gentlewoman, goes and wins her a stuffed dog – a Corgi – that she calls Ralph, and we learn that she’s had this dog named for apparently years, and has never been able to win it.

DARKWICCAN : Aw. [laughter]

DELAYNE : And, of course, she happens – Nicole’s so awesome – she happens to win two prizes, and also gets Waverly her own little Corgi.

DARKWICCAN : Which we don’t know the name of!

DELAYNE : No, we don’t.

DARKWICCAN : So I wonder if we’re going to find out what the name, the ultimate name of the Corgi plushie is in the sequel to this story.

DELAYNE : Oooh, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : But, before we start talking – we’re not really gonna talk about the sequel today, ‘cause it is very early going days in the sequel and there’s not a whole lot to dig into just yet.

But, jumping back to ‘Girl in a Country Song’, and talking about the Wynaught BroTP, one thing that I found really interesting is how Wynonna initially, out of really wanting to protect her friend from heartache, cautions Nicole, y'know, “You would be great for Waverly, unfortunately my sister is straight.” But then, when it becomes apparent that Waverly is in fact interested in Nicole, Wynonna becomes their biggest cheerleader. Which is really sweet. She is on Team Wayhaught.

DELAYNE : Yes, because we love it when people are on Team Wayhaught.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, mhm, mhm.

DELAYNE : It does get a little interesting, though, because Wynonna, ultimately, is protective of Waverly.

DELAYNE : Oh, yeah, Waverly is priority _numero uno_.

DELAYNE : Right? So, as the summer is coming to a close, and Wynonna kind of sees, y'know, yes Nicole has been great for Waverly, especially compared to Champ, with the summer coming to a close, and Waverly going on to college and making more of herself, she kind of becomes the one who gets them to not keep it together when the summer ends.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, she’s the one that takes Nicole aside, takes Nicole aside and says, “Hey, you need to let Waverly spread her wings, y'know, you need to let her figure out who she is as an adult away from this place.” And, I mean, the fact is, the logic is sound, the thinking is sound.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : And it’s really kind of sad, but it’s also – it’s one of those like, “God-dangit why does this have to make sense?”

DELAYNE : [laughter] Oh, that’s what we have part two for.

DARKWICCAN : That is what we have part two for. Or, instead of digging into to part two, like we said, there’s not a whole lot really posted yet. There are a few chapters, but they haven’t really gotten into the meat and bones of the story yet. There are still things about this work, ‘Girl in a Country Song’, that I would love to pick the author’s brain about.

DELAYNE : I’m curious about a lot of stuff, yes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So, luckily, I was able to reach out to Postscript8, and ask her if she wanted to come on and chat with us, and she graciously agreed. So, she is our author interview today! [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Rainbow on Wheels by Ryan Ike

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody and welcome back to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am you host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my co-host:

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And all of segment one we were talking about our favorite _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction ranch alternative universe fics. And we wrapped that up by chatting about a series called Into the Wild, and specifically focused on the first fic in that series, ‘Girl in a Country Song’, written by Postscript8. And we are lucky enough to have her with us today, she’s going by Lindsay, and we’re thrilled to have here on the show. Lindsay, welcome.

LINDSAY : Hi, guys. Thank you so much. I’m glad to be here.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, we’re excited to have you. So, before we get into the fanfiction discussion. [laughter] There’s something I’ve heard about you that I want to clarify. So, forgive me –

LINDSAY : Sure.

DARKWICCAN : - for putting you on the spot. You go by not only your writer’s handle of Postscript8, but you go by another nickname.

LINDSAY : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Because of something that known for doing at conventions. Are you now, or have you ever been Lady Bobo?

LINDSAY : Yes, yes, that is – that would be me, you’re correct.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : So how did you get into this? How did you get into cosplay? How did you get into the idea of dressing up as a cross-play of Bobo?

LINDSAY : So, I’ve done cosplay for ages. I play a lot of videogames, and so worked on a lot of cosplay for Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Overwatch. But I got super into _Wynonna Earp_ and I was like, well, I’m going to DragonCon, I could totally cosplay something, right? And I already had the similar hairstyle that he had, just not with the blond streak, so I was like, “Man, if I just put a blond streak in my hair, I’ll totally look like him. Done.” So I just – I went to the hairdresser, put a blond streak in, and I was like, alright, now I have to sew a fur coat and I have no idea how to do that, so. [laughter] And I was like, wow, this is going to be really great, ‘cause Atlanta, y'know, September, fur. [laughter] Perfect, perfect cosplay. I was sweating like crazy.

But no, I just did it, and I posted a picture – I posted one random picture on Twitter, and just said that I was doing it, and Emily caught wind of it, and then it kind of just exploded. I think I ended up having like over a thousand likes on that post, and it just, I was like not expecting it at all. I was blown away, ‘cause - I was just flabbergasted, I couldn’t stand it, so. And then, yeah, everybody just started calling me Lady Bobo, and I was like, I’m done, great.

DELAYNE : Did you get a lot of people wanting to take pictures with you?

LINDSAY : Oh, my god, I got stopped so much. And what’s kind of cool, too, is like you think that the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom is predominantly female. There are tons of guys that stopped me and where like, “Oh, my god” and like wanted to take photos with me. And I was like, “This is fantastic.” Like, I felt like tiny, mini celebrity, it was kind of weird, but –

DARKWICCAN : Overnight.

LINDSAY : - it was definitely really – I know, right? It was so cra[zy]. I mean, like, Michael, he was tweeting me and stuff, asking where I was when I was at the convention ‘cause he wanted to meet me, and I was like, I’m supposed to want to meet you, like, this is not… [laughter] That’s not what this is supposed to be about, like, I’m supposed to be the fan, you’re not supposed to be the fan.

DELAYNE : That’s crazy.

LINDSAY : Yeah –

DARKWICCAN : That is so awesome.

LINDSAY : - I even ran into Tim in the hallway, and he screamed, “Lady Bobo” and I was like, I’m done, I’m so finished. [laughter] Like, I can die now, like I can just, con’s over, just place me in the ground, I’m good. So, it was definitely insane.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, my gosh. That is so – that is so wonderfully epic, I love it so much.

LINDSAY : Yeah, so.

DARKWICCAN : Cool. Congratulations. [laughter]

LINDSAY : Thank you. I’m actually, I’m going to be perfecting his – I’m going to be doing his strait-jacket one, I think, for the next con that they’re at.

DARKWICCAN : [gasp] Oh.

LINDSAY : I got to work on how to sew a strait-jacket, and a new fur coat.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, man. Well, I’m sure that there are – was it McCalls –

[Delayne laughs]

LINDSAY : Patterns -

DARKWICCAN : - patterns –

LINDSAY : - for straight jackets?

DARKWICCAN : - for that. Yeah, yeah, totally. ‘Cause, I mean, c’mon, just think about it – because, they do costuming, just beyond the – they do theatrical costume designs –

LINDSAY : Right.

DARKWICCAN : - surely, somewhere.

LINDSAY : Yeah, oh yeah. I’ll find that pattern, don’t worry.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, I’m sure you’ll track it down.

LINDSAY : Mhm.

DARKWICCAN : And if you end up needing help, my background if theatrical production, so I’m sure I could probably track something down for you too.

LINDSAY : Mine’s in theatrical props, that’s where I graduated was called Seneca Theatre.

DARKWICCAN : Hey! Fantastic!

LINDSAY : Yeah, that’s where I learned how to – yeah, that’s where I learned how to build everything.

DELAYNE : Well, I am just -

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah -

DELAYNE : -  sitting over here -

DARKWICCAN : - I’ll tell you what –

DELAYNE : - like, cool.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Honestly, y'know, I think that going to theatrical production is like the greatest for learning how to just make anything. I mean, I am confident that I can pretty much make anything I need to make, on a budget.

LINDSAY : Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it’s going to look amazing. Oh, yeah, that Bobo costume is all handmade and I made it, I think, for under sixty bucks.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yes. Nice. Well done, well done.

LINDSAY : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : That is awesome. Okay, and y'know, something we talk about is how Michael Eklund was kind of – and Tim were, y'know, fanboying over you, and that’s the one thing I love about this fandom, is everybody fans everybody.

LINDSAY : Oh, my god, yeah, they’re so nice.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. We fan the actors on the show, we fan each other, obviously we are fangirling heavily for fanfic authors, but it’s just, yeah.

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : I love this fandom so much, it’s the greatest fandom in the world.

LINDSAY : I completely agree, yeah, for sure.

DARKWICCAN : But let’s get back to you and your writing.

LINDSAY : Yeah!

DARKWICCAN : How did – yeah, yeah man, that’s why we’re here today. How did you get into writing fanfiction?

LINDSAY : Okay, so slightly embarrassing. So I first started back when I was like, I don’t – maybe thirteen or fourteen. I think I was in like one of those forum chat rooms for _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ , and it was like a role-play chat room where everybody, like, was different characters, and I was Spike. So, like, I did this like weird role-play thing when I was, y'know, a baby, and that led on to, like, somebody suggested fanfiction, that like I read fanfiction there, and so I kind of found my way onto fanfic.net, and started producing there. And I was like, I could do this, I could write my own stories. And so I wrote the first fanfiction, from anywhere from _Buffy_ to like, I don’t know if you guys remember the Russian band Tatu?

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah.

LINDSAY : Totally had Tatu fanfiction that’s still probably floating somewhere out in the universe. [laughter] Not too proud of that. The thirteen-year-old Lindsay thought it was fantastic. But yeah, so I think just went from there and then basically whenever I get into a fandom it’s kind of my way to kind of do something during the downtime, off-season, if I feel like, y'know – or if a ship kind of goes, y'know, up in the air and it blows up, and I’m like, well, I’ll just write a story about, that’s fine. So, yeah, it’s kind of my way, it’s always been something I’ve done, whenever I’ve found a fandom that I really enjoy, just kind of to expand the universe a little bit.

DARKWICCAN : That’s really cool, nice. And I just think that anyway that you can find to fan beyond just absorbing the root media is time well spent.

LINDSAY : For sure, yeah.

DELAYNE : And important for just surviving everyday life, personally. So, I feel ya.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm.

LINDSAY : It’s just more fun to read, I think, too. I don’t know, ‘cause you can just take a couple of fics in like right before you go to bed, you can, y'know, if you’re on the bus you can just read a quick short one, under ten thousand words you’re like, no problem. It’s just a nice little like way to kind of – that’s - I’ve always gotten my LGBT media, is through fanfiction, ‘cause it’s just, it’s more accessible and it’s more abundant, so.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, yeah. Absolutely. A thousand percent agree. It’s the one – something we were talking about in last week’s show, actually, was how fanfiction is the one piece of media where, for the most part, the LGBTQIA community is in the majority of representation. We’re not used to that in regular media, so fanfiction is a lifesaver for a lot of us.

LINDSAY : There’s something for everybody.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely. And speaking of fanfiction, let’s get down to chatting about your fic ‘Girl in a Country Song’ which is the first part of a two part series currently in progress.

LINDSAY : Yep.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : I’m curious if the location in Texas, if it chosen for a particular reason, or if it was more just kind of right what you know, like…?

LINDSAY : I’m originally from Georgia, so I am southern, but I essentially – I love the South, which is weird to say for some people that are LGBTQIA, ‘cause they’re like, “The South? Why would you want to be there?” But I think it’s the culture, and the environment is just so rich, and I’ve never – I’ve been to Texas a few times, but Texas just seemed more of like a pasture place to me than Georgia did. And Georgia is a different kind of southern than Texas is, so I kind of didn’t want them – I didn’t want them to be _that_ southern. [laughter] I was like, they’re not that southern on the show. I think part of the reason I chose a southern U.S. location is because I kind of wish the show was a bit more southern. I kind of feel like it’s very Canadian, and think it’s kind of gotten that way more and more, like Nicole lost her slight southern accent, y'know, the cowboy hat went away which I’m sure we were all upset about.

DELAYNE : It’s been mentioned a few times.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, we’ve talked about it.

LINDSAY : Yeah, yeah. So I just, y'know, I kind of just wanted to set it in a place where I could have that more southern flair to it, and Texas, I was like y'know what, there are a lot of ranches in Texas. So, there we go.

DARKWICCAN : Yep.

DELAYNE : There indeed are a lot of ranches in Texas, ‘cause it actually – it covers quite a few of the major grasslands, from – because it’s such a large state, you have the short grass and sort of the middle grass prairie, and I think on the edge you still get into the tall grass prairie as well, so.

LINDSAY : Yep. Yeah, so -

DARKWICCAN : Should mention Delayne is a botanist, so.

LINDSAY : All about the grasses, it’s fine.

DARKWICCAN : Especially for a series like _Wynonna Earp_ where, like you said, it started off a bit more southern, it’s gotten more Canadian. And I think that is because Emily is all Canadian pride. And I’m like, you know what? Yeah. I agree. Canada is fricking awesome and should be proud of itself right now.

LINDSAY : Right.

DARKWICCAN : Something that I found kind of interesting in ‘Girl in a Country Song’ is that you very lightly explored Nicole’s internal conflict over falling for a straight girl, or potentially falling for a straight girl. But you didn’t really dig into it deep, it was just kind of a surface anxiety. But I’m wondering, was there any point where you thought you might get into a little more?

LINDSAY : I think like – I, one, think a lot of stories do that, I think that that’ – but I also think it’s kind of a thing of the past, I think that sexuality has become a lot more fluid, and so the worry of “oh my god they might be straight, I shouldn’t like them,” I think that’s slowly fading away. I don’t think it’s gone, obviously, but I think that –

DARKWICCAN : If look at Tumblr, it’s not.

LINDSAY : Yeah, right? [laughter] But no, I think that like – I think that it’s not as much of a conflict, I think that it’s more about people just liking people. I think that Nicole, while she was worried about it, wasn’t - wouldn’t be the kind of person that’s like, “well, that’s it, I can’t, y'know, she’s straight, I should completely stay away from her.” ‘Cause I think that there is always a sense, too, when you like somebody, that you kind of tell that they like you, that then maybe she’s not that straight. So I think that she was more just kind of was hopeful that maybe she wasn’t completely straight like she thought she was. And that she wasn’t gonna – until she got a, y'know, a direct “no, I’m straight, I’m not into you” kind of thing she was just going to be like, “alright, well, let’s just see what happens, y'know? Maybe she’s got an open mind.”

So she didn’t want to focus too much on that. ‘Cause like I said, I think that there are lot of stories where that’s a major conflict, and I didn’t want that to be a thing ‘cause I don’t think Waverly would ever – in my mind Waverly would never really be super conflicted by that. I don’t even think she was in the show, that much, she was kind of like, “Oh, well, alright. Guess I like girls now, great.” [laughter] So, yeah.

DELAYNE : So before we actually jumped on this recording to interview I went ahead I pulled up on Youtube Tim McGraw’s ‘Something Like That’. That would be the song you based chapter three on.

LINDSAY : Mhm.

DELAYNE : And I love your note: “Because every country song about falling in love has a county fair in it, right?” And, of course, the title of the fic, ‘Girl in a Country Song’. I’m curious if that exact image of going on a date at the country fair, if that was the inspiration for this?

LINDSAY : I think it definitely was a big part. So, growing up in the South I listened to country music a lot and I always kind of wished I was like that guy riding the tractor that that girl liked. [laughter] Y'know? I was like, I wish that was me, I want the pick-up truck and the girl. And so, y'know, I always had like images of the country fair, and y'know throwing a baseball and winning the girl a bear and all that kind of super cheesy stuff. And I’ve been to plenty of country fairs in my lifetime and so I was like, y'know, this would just be the perfect date. I could just totally see Wayhaught going to a fair and being super gross. [laughter] And just I was like, I’m going to live out my fantasy of what I wish had happened to me and girl when I was in high school, and go to the county fair. Yeah, and of course, like, there’s so many country songs about county fairs and taking your girl out on a date, and all that kind of stuff, so I was like, this is perfect.

DELAYNE : I agree, I grew up on country music as well, and I definitely preferred singing along to the guys’ songs, singing about falling in love with the girl.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm.

DELAYNE : I didn’t realize why I liked it at the time, necessarily, but I definitely liked those songs better.

LINDSAY : Yeah, no, I definitely – so, yeah, I think that that whole, like, that whole genre is so heteronormative, obviously. So I was always like, I’m going to make it real gay.

DARKWICCAN : Let’s gay this ride up, yeah.

LINDSAY : Stick a bunch of queer people at the country fair, it’ll be great. So yeah, and think it was just, I’ve just kind of wanted that iconic country image, but in a more homosexual sort of way.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah,

LINDSAY : So I was like, yeah.

DELAYNE : You definitely brought it onto the page extremely well, so thank you, ‘cause that helped us live – the rest of us live out of this fantasy as well.

LINDSAY : You’re welcome. I’m glad, I’m glad I could do that for you, ‘cause I think it’s important.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, absolutely, there are so many kind of traditional, yeah, as you say, heteronormative storylines that we as a queer community don’t get. So luckily that’s why fanfiction is awesome, it’s our opportunity to rectify that. Yeah, absolutely.

LINDSAY : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So, one of the things I really, really enjoyed about this story is your Wynaught BroTP that you’ve got going on, the friendship.

LINDSAY : [laughter] Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : The friendship between Wynonna and Nicole, and I love how you have them become fast friends right away. What, in writing the story, what was your favorite part of their friendship to dig into and explore?

LINDSAY : I think just the automatic loyalty. I always felt like they just – they had each other’s backs. Like, I think that Wynonna just trusted Nicole right away, and vice versa, and so they were just this automatic, like, just gut reaction that they both went to. Because I think they both work from their gut a lot, and I think they just both were like, “You’re good people, you’re good people. Okay, great, we’ve established this, we’re now friends.” Like it’s just a no questions asked sort of, “I know you’re okay, therefore I can trust you.”

And so I think that it was just really nice to be able to write that, ‘cause I think the show took a little bit longer to get there, but I think that that’s kind of where they are at this point. And so I kind of am glad to just have that sort of just automatic friendship, just that ease of knowing that you can trust that person, and there’s just no other question, y'know, like you know they have your back and you have theirs. Because it’s just that innate knowing.

DARKWICCAN : Do you have a favorite exchange from the story?

LINDSAY : Oh, lord. They have a lot of good ones. I dunno, off the top of my head, honestly. ‘Cause I’m writing the new section of it, the nine years later, and I think their relationship has really changed since then, too, since they were younger. Yeah, I don’t know, I can’t think of one off the top of my head, honestly, that’s horrible to say.

DARKWICCAN : That’s also kind of like picking you children, so, y'know, that’s cool, I’ll let it slide, I’ll let it slide absolutely. [laughter] This time.

DELAYNE : You also have a lot of other characters. I love it when fics really bring in, y'know, some of these more minor characters. I do enjoy Rosita and her being the only other lesbian in town. [laughter] So, I’m curious, when you approached Rosita’s character, what did you feel was important to showcase about her personality and her pursuit of Nicole?

LINDSAY : I think that, like, I think that in a lot of towns, and especially little small southern towns, there’s always that one gay, y'know, that’s just kind of – they’re very open, they’re the one that you kind of seek out when you’re not sure, or you’re kind of confused, and there’s always that one person.

And I kind of always saw Rosita as somebody who just doesn’t care what other people think, and she’s just her. And so deciding to make her, y'know, the queer character – I think this actually shortly after - spoilers for Season Two, no one’s seen that, shh, whatever – y'know, I think this is after the – shortly after the hot-head scene with her and Waverly, so I was like, well she’s a little gay already, so that’s easy.

And so I think that’s it just, y'know, I would just see her, if she was – if she wanted somebody I think that she would just make it very clear, and I don’t think that she would hold back, and I think that she would be that kind of person that just knows who she is and knows what she wants. And so I think it was really important to show her as that kind of super confident character. ‘Cause I think Nicole and Waverly don’t always come across that way, they kind of get a little shy and nervous sometimes, but Rosita’s just like, “Nope, this is who I am, this is what I want, deal with it.” So.

DELAYNE : Well, my favorite part is how well she dealt with Nicole’s rejections, so to me that was super important, so yes she knows what she wants, but she’s also okay with, y'know, not getting it.

LINDSAY :  I mean I also think she thinks she’s hot shit, so she’s like, “Alright, next!” [laughter] Like, y'know, she’s kind of very much like, “You don’t want me? That’s okay, there are other fish in the sea.” Y'know, even in this small town, so I think that she’s very much like, she respects that, and she’s like, “Alright, cool.” It’s not like she – she hadn’t gotten like super invested in Nicole –

DELAYNE : Right.

LINDSAY : - this is a hot redhead, like, let me slide up onto this. [laughter] And it think, y'know, she was like, “Oh you don’t – you’re not there? Great, okay, well, maybe another time.”

DELAYNE : Right. Yeah, that’s fantastic.

DARKWICCAN : But something that you just mentioned, that Nicole and Waverly at times seem a bit more unsure and shy when compared to Rosita. One thing that really struck me, and caught me by surprise was – and I think this might tap into Nicole’s general background uncertainty – is that she gives in almost immediately to Wynonna telling her to end things with Waverly before she leaves for college. I didn’t expect it to be that straightforward. Why did you decide to not have her push back harder?

LINDSAY : So, a couple of things. I think, one, I think of Nicole as the kind of person who often doesn’t think that she deserves the best, or like, somebody like Waverly. I think that there are other things in her past that I think are going to come more to light in the second section of my story.

But I think that she just – I think that she doesn’t think she deserves somebody as wonderful as Waverly. And I also think that she doesn’t want to hold her back, ‘cause she sees that Waverly is – can go places. She sees that Waverly can do things that she won’t be able to do in those small towns and tiny counties, I think that – and she doesn’t want to hold her back.

And also, too, like I said, how she trusts Wynonna, Wynonna knows Waverly best and I think that she was just like, “Y'know, if Wynonna thinks this, I also have these doubts and Wynonna’s just confirming all of them, I should let her go and do what she needs to do. And if we’re supposed to be together, then it’ll happen, but now is not the time.”

I think she just kind of understood that Waverly was just starting her life, y'know, she was just getting out of the town and going to school, and she didn’t want to hold her back on any of that, she didn’t want to be the thing that she was just constantly writing home to, or constantly trying to travel home every weekend. She wanted her to be able to have that experience and do that on her own, and if they’re meant to be together then, y'know, stars will align again, sort of thing.

DARKWICCAN : That absolutely makes sense. Do you think that in her wildest dreams, in her wildless [sic] – wildest kind of notions that she would have ever thought it would be _nine years_ before they saw each other again?

LINDSAY : I don’t think – no. I don’t think – I when I was speaking, I was trying to think like how long the separation would be, and I kind of wanted to give it enough time for it to be kind of awkward? And just – but also, y'know, even being away from somebody for nine years, if you’re meant to be with them, if they’re your other half, it doesn’t matter how long you’re apart. I mean, you could be apart – you’ve read love stories where they’re apart for thirty years and they find each other again, and, y'know.

So I was just like, I wanted to give Waverly enough time to kind of be herself, and do her thing, and figure herself out. ‘Cause I think at eighteen, you don’t much of anything. I didn’t know much of anything at eighteen, so like, y'know.

DARKWICCAN : But you think you do. You think you do.

LINDSAY : Yeah, oh yeah, you totally think you do. But you don’t – like it sucks, you know you’re twenty-five, twenty-six, and you’re looking at reality and you’re like, “Oh, shit. I didn’t know anything.” So, yeah, I think – I don’t think that Nicole thought it was going to be that long. I thought – I think Nicole thought that after Waverly graduated she would come looking for her, they would meet again. And so when it didn’t happen, she was kind of was just like, “Oh. Maybe it’s not supposed to. Maybe – maybe I was right in letting her go and do her thing ‘cause I wasn’t the right person for her.”

DARKWICCAN : Well, it certainly makes the set-up for the second piece, ‘Wherever is Your Heart’, very – I am on the edge of my seat with anticipation. Obviously, I’ve read the first few chapters you’ve published so far, but, y'know, I’m like, “What’s going happen?”

LINDSAY : I’ve gotten a couple more chapters written, I just need to edit them and post them. So they are on their way.

DARKWICCAN : Yay! Yay.

DELAYNE : But we never want to pressure anyone.

DARKWICCAN : We never pressure anyone, yeah.

LINDSAY : And I definitely – it’ll probably – I’ll probably speed up writing, too, once the show comes back and I get bitten by the _Wynonna Earp_ bug all over again, I definitely know I’m going to be churning them out for sure.

DELAYNE : Right? Some people increase production during – during the show, and some people increase production after, because they need that fix. So.

LINDSAY : I kind of hit a peak after the show ended, and then kind of hit a lull. And I’ll start to peak again as the build-up comes closer and closer to the next season, for sure. It’s going to be a slow burn though, I’m just warning you. Like, it’s not – it’s going to be a long one, so, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Well you’ve got a lot more going on in ‘Wherever is Your Heart’, as opposed to ‘Girl in a Country Song’. Something we actually talk about – we talk about in the first segment in that ‘Girl in a Country Song’ really is a love story, it’s a simple love story. There isn’t a major antagonist, there are a few annoyances, but really it’s a love story and a coming of age story. Whereas ‘Wherever is Your Heart’ seems like it – well, it absolutely has a major antagonist. We don’t know who it is yet, but we know that they’re around, and they’re dangerous.

LINDSAY : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So that’s also driving that sort of – that storyline, which is very, very different. So yeah, I can’t wait. [laughter]

LINDSAY : Good. I’m glad, I’m glad. Yeah, no, I definitely, I definitely need to just get those next chapters added and that – I’ve gotten plenty of messages about them already, so.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, man, that’s so rough, y'know, as a writer, that’s rough. ‘Cause it’s one of things where it’s like, yay, I’m glad that you’re reading my work and that you are anticipating the next part and you want it come, but it’s also like, dang it, you just pile the guilt on my shoulders and that makes it harder for me to write. ‘Cause I’m -

LINDSAY : It actually -

DARKWICCAN : - feeling guilty –

LINDSAY : - it helps – it helps me, it puts a fire under my ass, I’m like, alright, I gotta sit down and write these ‘cause people want them. It kind of helps me kind of get back into it, so I encourage my readers to get onto me about it.

DELAYNE : Uh-oh, you’re going to get a lot more emails. [laughter]

LINDSAY : I know, right? [laughter] My inbox just blows up.

DARKWICCAN : Just warning, fair warning.

LINDSAY : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Okay, well, it sounds like you’ve got some work to do there, so I know we don’t want to keep you from getting those chapters edited and posted, so we’re just going to ask one more question and then we’ll cut you loose.

LINDSAY : Sure.

DARKWICCAN : So this is a question that we ask all of our authors. Delayne, do you want to take it, or do you want me to take it?

DELAYNE : I’ll go ahead and take it.

DARKWICCAN : Go for it.

DELAYNE : So. You’re stranded on a desert island and can have only one fanfic to read. What is it?

LINDSAY : So it’s going to be the fanfic that inspired me to write this one: ‘Open Range Hearts’ by thewaywedo33.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Aw, yes!

LINDSAY : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome.

LINDSAY : Completely and utterly, like, I read that and I was like, “Man, I want to write mine.” And mine is like nowhere near as long and nowhere near as epic, but I just wanted to be like, I was like, “I want to put my hand in this.” And I think I was like this is fantastic – it’s a wonderful, amazing story, I’ve read it probably three or four times, I think it’s brilliant, it’s one of the best _Wynonna Earp_ fanfictions out there. And, so I was like, man, I, y'know, I think mine is like the amateur version of ‘Open Range Hearts’ and I’m okay with it, so. ‘Cause I just wanted a little bit more, y'know, I wanted a little bit more country cheese in it, and so I think I – I think I got that country cheese, a little extra. But yeah, definitely, definitely that one, for sure.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, ‘Open Range Hearts’ is definitely one of the most popular fanfics out there, and in fact we -

DELAYNE : Shall we start making a tally board, for how many times it’s chosen?

DARKWICCAN : We should. This is the –

LINDSAY : Oh, I’m sure.

DARKWICCAN : This is the second time it’s been chosen as a desert island fic. But if – as – we actually did an interview with Cuffs, so if you go to Episode 5 of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ podcast, if you haven’t listened to it already, that is our Haught on a Horse, ‘Open Range Hearts’ specific episode.

LINDSAY : Nice. Okay, I’ll definitely need to catch that one, because it’s just – it’s brilliant, it’s such a good one, that I was just like I had to write one, ‘cause I was just like, “Ugh!” I just – I can’t do it, I can’t do it as good as they did, but I still – I wanna put my two cents and put a little more country music into it, so.

DARKWICCAN : Well I think I did – I think that you did a terrific job.

DELAYNE : Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

DARKWICCAN : We wouldn’t be chatting with – we wouldn’t be chatting with you. We have a high standard, yeah.

DELAYNE : It’s definitely very different – it’s still on a ranch, but it’s – yours is this own, unique and super sweet coming of age story that is – just warms the heart, all the fluffy and the super gayness, I just love it.

LINDSAY : Grossly sweet, yep. Yep.

DARKWICCAN : The best kind, the best kind.

LINDSAY : Oh, of course.

DARKWICCAN : The kind that makes Wynonna go [vomiting noise].

LINDSAY : Yep. All the time. Every single time. That’s pretty much what my editor does, they’re just like [vomiting noise]. And I’m like, oh, I’m sorry. [laughter] That’s how I know I wrote that chapter well.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : When your editor’s disgusted, like, dammit, it’s so – gonna give you a cavity over here, Lindsay.

LINDSAY : Yep. Yep. Awesome

DARKWICCAN : Well, Lindsay, thank you so much for coming on the show, it has been thrilling to chat with you. You’re a ton of fun to chat with, and –

LINDSAY : Well, thank you.

DARKWICCAN : And can I ask you, is it okay – can we post a picture of you as Lady Bobo up in the show notes?

LINDSAY : Yeah, go for it.

DELAYNE : Yay!

DARKWICCAN : Awesome.

LINDSAY : I’ve gotten a ton on my Twitter, you can find on – I’m TheLadyBobo. There’s a ton of – there should be several – a lot of DragonCon photos, like that’s - pick any one you want.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, excellent, thank you.

LINDSAY : Yeah, of course.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, well I guess we’ll let you get back to your writing desk there in Georgia.

LINDSAY : Yeah, no, actually I’m about to go watch a movie with my girlfriend, who I met at DragonCon.

DARKWICCAN : Hey! [laughter] Yes!

LINDSAY : She was – she was dressed as Officer Haught.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, my god. [laughter] I love this fandom so much! I love this fandom so much.

LINDSAY : Yeah I met her – I met her on Twitter, she’s HaughtsStetson, that’s her –

DARKWICCAN : Are you serious?!

LINDSAY : Yeah. Yep, we met at DragonCon, and the rest is history.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, my gosh, well on that spectacular note we’re going to sign off. Thanks everybody, and have a great rest of your week.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for joining us.

Huge thanks to Postscript8, aka Lady Bobo, aka Lindsay for coming on to chat about her fic 'Girl in a Country Song'. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro and to MJ for the [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story and Path to Glory by Darren Korb; Rainbow on Wheels by Ryan Ike; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Maddigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast.  And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast
> 
> We're also on iTunes!


	12. I'll Take an Extra-Gay Double Chai Latte

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week on the podcast DarkWiccan and Delayne have had way too much coffee! They share their four favorite Coffeeshop AU fics and then manage to sit still long enough to chat with author AGirlWithPicturesInHerMind, aka Itxy!

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/ill-take-an-extra-gay-double-chai-latte)

 

Read the Fics!

[A Tall Cup of Somethin'](https://t.co/SoXgqpWJ4S) by Bootsncatz 

[Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop](https://t.co/zLVOUyQEEu) by Ekhwanders 

[i think that possibly, maybe i’m falling for you](https://t.co/Fktevc2Aqa) by coffee_music_books 

[See You Tomorrow? (Series)](https://archiveofourown.org/series/728475) by AGirlWithPicturesInHerMind 

 

 

  
Itxy's Desert Island Fic: [In Fate's Hands](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8153071) by Skillzyo and TheGaySmurf 

 

And check out Itxy's self-help blog! [Itxayana.com](http://itxayana.com/)

 

Transcript for the Deaf and HOH by FlyingFanatic!

 

EFA EPISODE 12 – I'LL TAKE AN EXTRA GAY DOUBLE CHAI LATTE

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host DarkWiccan and with me is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And this week Delayne and I are bouncing all over the inside of our recording studios because we have had far, far, far too much coffee.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Except for that part where I don’t actually drink coffee, but.

DARKWICCAN : I don’t drink coffee either.

DELAYNE : But I am caffeinated, I will tell you that. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : That is – yes, I think we are both caffeinated by just osmosis, because this week’s episode is dedicated to that quarter-stone of all fanfiction universes, the Coffee Shop AU.

DELAYNE : Oh, yeah, it is, it is popular, popular theme.

DARKWICCAN : But as you’ve pointed out, Delayne, it makes a lot of sense in this particular fandom.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I – once I came to that realization, man, it was like, oh yeah, Nicole ordered a cappuccino, duh!

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : It all makes sense now. Nicole was treating Shorty’s like a coffee shop instead of a bar.

DELAYNE : And actually we see that in a few of these fics that we have for this episode, is that Shorty’s is actually a coffee shop.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, these writers just went, sure, Nicole thought it was a coffee shop so we’ll just let it be a coffee shop.

DELAYNE : I did cheat a little, my first pick is not a full Coffee Shop AU, it’s actually canon divergence.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, well before you dive into that, let’s explain to our listeners what’s happening here. So, much like when we talk about a common theme, we typically will present multiple fics. Our average is four, and that’s the same here. So we have four fics, all based in some way in a coffee shop setting that we’re bringing to you today. And so the first one is Delayne’s first choice. So, Delayne, you’re saying it’s canondivergent, and not exactly entirely a Coffee Shop.

DELAYNE : Right, right. So it does occur in canon, so it’s not a completely different setting in a coffee shop. But – it’s called ‘Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop’, and that is indeed what they do.

DARKWICCAN : And who wrote that one?

DELAYNE : Ekhwanders wrote that one, it is rated E, ten chapters, 51 000 words, it says it’s not complete but it actually is complete, and it’s actually a Fake Dating AU prompt for Wayhaught Week.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, okay, so kind of like ‘Little White Lies’ was a Fake Dating AU prompt from Wayhaught Week?

DELAYNE : Exactly.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : And in this one, Nicole asks Waverly to play her fake girlfriend when her perfect younger sister comes to town. And so they finally go for that coffee that they promised in canon and they’re going to treat it like a first date so that when her sister asks questions that, y'know, they can answer it like they have gone on a first date. And by the end of this fake date, they decide they actually do need to be dating and it becomes kind of a real date, and they totally fell in love at a coffee shop.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : And – and so, kind of touching back to the fact that it was for Wayhaught Week, and the Fake Dating AU thing. So one thing we talked about back when we had the episode were we talked about ‘Little White Lies’ is that ‘Little White Lies’ is unique in the Fake Dating AU premise in that it is a fake relationship that is meant to be fake for an extended period of time, in a very public way. Whereas in this story it’s more of a classic Fake Dating AU premise, where it’s meant to only happen for one night, for one event, and then it’s supposed to be over. But of course, as you were saying, they don’t even get that far because they end up dating before the fake dating.

DELAYNE : Right?

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : This is very confusing. They were prepping to fake date, and ending up actually dating.

DELAYNE : Yeah, and so this – what Ekhwanders notes is should have been a one shot kind of turns into this big mutli-chapter story and we get to meet Nicole’s like wonderful and supportive family, her sister is really cool, and we actually see them quite a bit.

DARKWICCAN : So we see – we see them – we see Waverly interacting with Nicole’s family, we see their relationship becoming more solid and growing over time, and we kind of end up following their entire relationship arc.

DELAYNE : Yes, it does follow along to a hilarious epilogue that sort of, kind of brings back around this – the original idea, and I don’t want to spoil for ya, so…

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, don’t give it away.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : So you gotta go and read it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, you just gotta carve out some time to chew down those 51 000 words. Yeah, so, like you were saying, we get into the epilogue where, we’re not going to give anything away, but Waverly manages to bring back around the whole fake relationship concept to a pretty, pretty satisfying conclusion, it’s pretty awesome. [laughter] Okay, so that’s your first one, ‘Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop’ by Ekhwanders.

My first one is ‘A Tall Cup of Somethin'’ by Bootsncatz. [sings] And boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and cats – [speaks] I can’t read their name without dropping the beat. [laughter]

So, so ‘Tall Cup of Somethin'’ is a one-shot, it is a classic Coffee Shop AU, pretty much the entire story takes place within the coffee shop. Waverly is the barista, as usual, hint hint, writers. Flip that around one of these days, eh, I challenge you to make Nicole the barista. But, yeah, essentially Waves is the barista, Nicole is a cop who comes in to get coffee, apparently, apparently in the morning before her shift, and slowly over time Rosita, who’s also – I think she’s actually the manager of the coffee shop – she sees that Waves is interested in Nicole and keeps sort of nudging her in the direction of like, “what‘s going on, you’re totally interested in her.” And –

DELAYNE : “She and I can read people –“

DARKWICCAN : Exactly.

DELAYNE : “- so yeah, she’s into you, so like, get it, make this work.”

DARKWICCAN : So it’s really kind cute watching that interplay between Rosita and Waverly.

DELAYNE : What I find hilarious at the beginning when – because it’s Waverly’s first day when it starts out, this fic, and Jeremy as the shift supervisor who’s training her.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, Jeremy in any position of authority is little bit like, are we sure this is a good idea? [laughter] However, I will say I slung coffee for Starbucks as a shift manager for three-ish years and I would have been happy to have Jeremy on my shift team. I think that he would have been great, and you know what, he’s a chemist, so, and just generally brilliant so his lattes would have been perfection.

DELAYNE : But Waverly who’s, y'know, always wants to do a good job, and she’s probably good at everything that she does. She has the perfect foam ratio in her coffees even though she’s super nervous about doing good on her first day. And I think she spills coffee everywhere.

DARKWICCAN : But her foam is still perfect.

DELAYNE : Yes,

DARKWICCAN : Her cappuccinos are ace. And I have to say there was this one part where Nicole is chatting Waverly up and she’s like, “Wow, you’re really good at that,” and Waves is like, “Yeah, y'know, it’s not that, and duh duh.” And then she immediately burns herself. [laughter] And I’m like, yes, that happens. [laughter]

DELAYNE : I think I’ve made coffee for a few months, it was weird, I was working at a take ‘n bake pizza place that in the mornings had, y'know, their little cappuccino machine and I did –

DARKWICCAN : Breakfast pizzas?

DELAYNE : - not last very long but I’m pretty sure I burned myself.

DARKWICCAN : You always – everyone gets burned at least once, at least once.

DELAYNE : How else are you going to learn?

DARKWICCAN : Exactly, that’s how you learn to not touch the hot thing. But yeah, so Waverly’s working as a barista and she just cannot seem to drum up the courage, ultimately, to ask Nicole out.

DELAYNE : But Nicole shows up pretty consistently.

DARKWICCAN : She does, she is there every day, pretty much right at opening.

DELAYNE : Yep.

DARKWICCAN : Which – opening is early, ya’ll, opening is like 4:15, 4:30 in the morning.

DELAYNE : I think in the setting, does it give us a time.

DARKWICCAN : They probably do, I don’t have it up in front me at this moment, but it’s – just know it’s early, it’s oh god it hurts me o’clock, is what it is. But ultimately, y'know, of course they do get together and the way they get together in this instance in kinda interesting.

DELAYNE : Yes, because Wynonna goes to the drunk tank.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, Wynonna goes to the drunk tank and this is when Waverly discovers – when she goes to pick Wynonna up – Waverly discovers that Nicole has in fact not been coming in in the morning before her shift, she’s actually been coming in in the morning after her graveyard shift.

DELAYNE : After a while after her graveyard shift, like.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, a while – yeah, like, not immediately, ‘cause she’s got to wait for the coffee shop to actually open which isn’t right after she gets off shift, so. So I thought that was really cute and how Waverly gets very stern with Nicole, like don’t you do that again. But that ultimately, that exchange lead to the end of the story and how that resolves, which is very, very satisfying and you must read it to find out what it is.

DELAYNE : Yes, I mean it’s the perfect short, sweet, tall cup o’ somethin’. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Mhm. [sings] And boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and cats… [laughter]

So, what’s up next, Delayne, so what’s your next choice?

DELAYNE : So, you know how the last one was called ‘Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop’?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, mhm.

DELAYNE : Apparently, there is a song by Landon Pigg [Darkwiccan snorts] that is – that is the same -

DARKWICCAN : Oh!

DELAYNE : - that is the name of the song.

DARKWICCAN : That’s the name of his name?

DELAYNE : [laughter] Yes, I believe it’s Landon Pigg is the name of his name, but the name of is song is ‘Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop’.

DARKWICCAN : Great!

DELAYNE : And the first – so, there is a note, Ekwanders does make a note that that song of course did inspire, in part, that fic. And so for my next choice is the first line of that song, “i think that possibly, maybe i'm falling for you” and this by coffee_music_books, and this too inspired – that song inspired this fic as well.

DARKWICCAN : Cool, okay, so what’s the story?

DELAYNE : So Nicole has a favorite coffee shop and of course, Waverly works there.

DARKWICCAN : Again, we’ve got barista Waverly, c’mon writers, c’mon.

DELAYNE : In this one Nicole is a cop and so she does come in – in this one, Nicole is a cop but, y'know, she keeps going into the coffee shop and she’s not entirely sure why, like there’s the comfy, green couch, or is it because the cute barista seems to know all of her usuals?

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Gee, gosh golly, could that possibly be it?

DELAYNE : But because Nicole is a cop there is a moment where she gets injured and so she – Waverly doesn’t see her in the shop for a couple of days and freaks out. So when Nicole finally shows up Waverly like demands her phone number, demands to be in contact and that’s, y'know, that’s when they finally trade numbers. And they don’t start dating right away but it kind of jumps, it flashes through their relationship and them getting together and all revolves around Shorty’s café.

DARKWICCAN : Which happens to be Nicole’s favorite coffee shop. So you mentioned that it’s part of series. What’s the name of the series?

DELAYNE : The name of the series is ‘love jukebox’, so coffee_music_books wrote, I think there’s three in the series so far and they’re all inspired by songs, but this is its own stand-alone fic, it is not connected to the others in the series.

DARKWICCAN : Right, each story in the series is kind of its own stand-a-lone piece.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : I think what I liked about this one is it’s simplicity, it’s a very simple story, but it’s really lovingly told, lots of excellent description, and not – and lots of excellent showing rather than telling, there’s a lot of - coffee_music_books does a really great job of really creating the – not only the – setting the scene but also the sensation of the scene and the sensations that the characters are experiencing, and that really puts you in the story as you’re reading along, so that’s nice. And it’s also very, it’s a very relaxing story as well, I found.

DELAYNE : Yeah, yeah, and the way it like flows, kind of – I mean it jumps in their relationship, but it doesn’t feel jumpy.

DARKWICCAN : It doesn’t, yeah. No, I agree with you, it’s sort of in the mid-range as far as word count for a one-shot, maybe slightly upper/mid range. Most one-shots I read come in shy of ten, ten thousand words, this guy’s coming in about a little shy of six.

DELAYNE : I have it at five point six.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. So it’s a relatively quick read but it’s very relaxing and it’s, yeah, it’s like a warm – well, in our case a warm of tea, but, uh. Yeah, it’s nice, and I do love how indignant Waverly gets when Nicole gets injured on the job, she’s not someone you want to cross.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : “How dare you –“

DARKWICCAN : Like – if this is what –

DELAYNE : “- I was so worried about you!”

DARKWICCAN : Exactly.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, like how – we didn’t know – “I didn’t know where you were, I thought you were dead,” y'know, that kind of usual thing. And this was before either one of them have confessed their feelings for the other, so, yeah.

DELAYNE : Yeah. I think at that point Nicole realized, “Huh, maybe there’s -”

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : “- maybe there’s some reciprocation.”

DARKWICCAN : Yes. Okay so now I think we’re up to my second pick, which is a series called ‘See You Tomorrow?’ and ‘See You Tomorrow?’ is comprised of six works. Each work is paired, so the first two are called ‘See You Tomorrow?’ question mark, and ‘See You Tomorrow.’ period. And that’s sort of the titling conceit going forward. The next two are ‘See You Later?’ question mark and See You Later.’ period, and the final pairing are ‘See you in 5?” question mark and ‘See You in 5.’ period.

And it covers really the full relationship of Waverly and Nicole in this universe, from the very, very beginnings of the relationship up through past marriage and beyond. And it’s very sweet.

I will say this: it is a very sweet series, I really enjoy it, and one of the  reasons why I enjoy it is, and this might sound weird, it’s because it’s of the four stories we that we have selected today, it’s not the best written but, here’s what I enjoy about that. The author, who’s handle is AGirlWithPicturesInHerMind, is a very young writer, and you can see her writing actually grow and evolve over the course of these six works, and for me that’s very exciting, and enjoyable, and fun to see, as you kind of see how she develops how she writes character, how she writes and provides description for settings, and how she creates this sort of over-arching storyline that runs through all six pieces, and how she just, again, just improves her writing, improves over the course –

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - and it’s just really fun to watch happen. And I just think, y'know, that’s something that makes it very unique.

DELAYNE : You know what else makes it unique?

DARKWICCAN : Ooh? I bet I’m going to agree with you, but what?

DELAYNE : Actually, a lot of things, but kind of the biggest one is that Nicole is portrayed as younger than Waverly.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that – I’ve not seen that done before, like anywhere.

DELAYNE : Nicole is also very unique in this in that she’s not the confident, swaggering cop that we see in canon. She’s a high schooler, and she’s very nervous, and stutters, and appears, y'know, later we’re told she has some social anxiety, and it’s just very different than how we’re used to Nicole portrayed.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, we’re used to seeing Nicole come in, as you say, with the swagger and the confidence, and in this case she comes in and she’s a bit of a bumbling mess. Again, as you also noted, she’s younger than Waverly in this story. Another unique thing here is that Nicole is native to Purgatory, and Waverly is new to town, that’s another kind of taking the standard and flipping it.

But what it seems like is that the author is essentially taking this young, inexperienced Nicole and is showing how over time she can become more confident, that she’s even – despite the fact that she’s, y'know, nervous about everything [laughter] when she really wants something, y'know, she actually swallows the fear and ultimately goes for it even if her knees are knocking together.

But yeah, no, you’re right, Delayne, it is all about the journey and watching Nicole kind of grow into her own personhood, as she becomes more of an adult and settles into this relationship with Waverly. And much like watching her grow as an adult – again the author is growing as a writer, and so the two sort of parallel each other, and it’s really fun to read.

But the fact that the author is so young makes me wanna sit down and chat, and kind of figure out how and why she came up with the ideas that she did.

DELAYNE : Right? Especially all of these very unique things that make it very different from not just the other Coffee Shop AUs, but how the characters are portrayed in general in all of the fics.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So luckily I reached out to her and, again her author handle on AO3 is AGirlWithPicturesInHerMind, but her actual name is Itxy and she’s asked that we refer to her as Itxy in her interview with her today! [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Ruse of an Ooze by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody and welcome back to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my co-host:

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we are super excited today to have with us the author of ‘See You Tomorrow?” Itxy! Itxy, welcome to the show.

IXTY : Hi, thanks so much for having me.

DARKWICCAN : We’re very excited to have you on, this is a topic that we’ve had a lot of fun kind of exploring because we didn’t realize just how many Coffee Shop AUs there were in the _Earp_ fandom.

IXTY : Oh yeah, in any fandom, I think.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, right?

DELAYNE : I think it’s a little – it’s extra special for us Earpers because you have Nicole ordering a cappuccino, I mean, it’s so natural to go from there, really.

IXTY : It is.

DARKWICCAN : It really is. Yeah, it’s not forced at all. So, Ixty, I think that you are actually probably our youngest author that we’ve had on the show. May I enquire as to your age?

IXTY : I’m twenty.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter] I think you’re definitely the youngest.

IXTY : Am I really?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I think so.

IXTY : Wow.

DARKWICCAN : I think all the other folks we’ve spoken with are twenty-three and up. So, good job on being young.

[laughter]

IXTY : I try my hardest.

DELAYNE : I didn’t start writing fanfic ‘til what, twenty-four? So…

DARKWICCAN : Well, I mean there are quite a few authors in this fandom who started writing for other fandoms when they were mere little, itty, bitty teenagers.

DELAYNE : Right.

DARKWICCAN : So. So, y'know, I mean.

DELAYNE : Yep.

DARKWICCAN : But – so, okay, so Ixty, how did you get into writing fanfic?

IXTY : Well, actually, I got into it because I started reading a Sanvers fic, so –

DARKWICCAN : Fair, okay.

IXTY : Yeah, I was obsessed with Sanvers, y'know, and so I started reading it and I was like, oh, this is really cool. And then I kind of started, just like for myself, started writing something based on Sanvers, and then as I kept reading more fics I was like, what if I actually upload this, y'know? And so, like, even though I was terrified I uploaded it and that’s when I, as I was reading and I was looking for Sanvers fics, I saw one that was kind of like a – it had both Wayhaught and Sanvers. And I’d already seen _Wynonna Earp_ but I hadn’t actually read a Wayhaught fic, and so I started reading Wayhaught fics and after I discovered that I was like, okay, what if I turned this Sanvers fic that I’ve written into Wayhaught?

Because it’s a terrible idea, [laughter] any chance, but I fell in love with it after that. [laughter] Oh yeah, it was terrible. So that’s how I got into it, I just wrote that Wayhaught thing and I was like, you know what, let me just write Wayhaught entirely so that meant, obviously, way more fics.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, you’re actually quite prolific on AO3 and I love seeing new stuff pop up from you because you’re a younger writer but you’re – it’s really been nice watching your evolution of writing.

IXTY : Oh, that’s so sweet.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, well, I mean that’s something that – there are so many authors within this fandom who have been writing for years in other fandoms, and we do get a few, y'know, kind of beginners that are kind of dipping their toe in, and trying it out, and some of them stick around and some of them kind of flame out pretty quick, but it’s been really nice to see you come in and start as kind of a young writer and watch your writing evolve as you’ve been going along. And that’s actually such a treat. It’s a treat for me, I don’t know if it’s a treat for anybody else. I really enjoy it, I like watching people just improve on what’s already pretty darn good work and just get better and better.

IXTY : Oh, thank you, that means a lot, like, I like to think that I’ve grown but, y'know, hearing it from someone else just kind of gives you that validation, so thank you.

DARKWICCAN : Happy to provide the stamp of validation, absolutely. So, another great thing about being a young author is that you’re not afraid, it seems, to try stuff out that other authors tend to skirt around or avoid altogether. And one of the things that you’ve done that I’ve never seen done in any other fic within, y'know, that Wayhaught fic fandom, I’ve never seen anyone make Nicole younger than Waverly. And you did! So I have to ask why did you decide to do that? I think it’s great.

IXTY : Well, I kind of have this obsession with being different. [laughter] And so – ‘cause I spent a lot of my life trying to fit in, and that didn’t work out, so I was like, how can I make ‘See You Tomorrow?” different from anything that I’ve read. And so I was like, okay, what if I just make Nicole a younger age. And, y'know, they’re only a year apart, Nicole’s eighteen and Waverly’s nineteen, but I wanted to just explore their – if their dynamic would change, just making that one year difference.

And I think it did, but I just wanted to kind of explore like, what would happen if Nicole was not only younger but also still a senior in high school, and make Waverly a freshman in college, because even though they are a year apart, I think, thinking about a senior in high school and a freshman in college, there’s a big difference, y'know, in like maturity levels and the way they interact with others and, y'know, adult lives. And so, I just wanted to explore how that would change. Like I said, I’m obsessed with being different, so I just went ahead and did it.

DELAYNE : You definitely do a lot of things different, and it is impressive. I’m curious as to what made you decide to give Nicole a stutter and, well, maybe moderate social anxiety?

IXTY : Well, Nicole as we see her in the show is obviously a very confident person, I mean we see that from the moment she meets Waverly, just sway in there, and so I wanted  - I just, I kept asking myself, like, what if she wasn’t always this type of person? What if she was the type of person who – who was like me. Who cared too much about what people thought about her, who was afraid to put herself out there because – I mean, afraid of rejection or anything like that.

So I was like what if she struggled with her confidence and she wasn’t always this confident person that we see right now? So I wanted to explore this side of her, in which she grows throughout the fic and so, yeah.

I wanted to show that progress, because I also wanted to show people that, if there are people out there who are struggling with their own confidence, and with self-love, and all these different things, that even though they’re in this position right now, they still have a chance to grow, and they still have a chance to kind of, like grow out of their shell, even though what they might struggle things that are holding them back. So I wanted to portray that side where maybe Nicole wasn’t always that confident person that she is right now.

Because a lot of people assume that, even though – like, if you see an extrovert who’s like super confident, you assume like, oh they must have been born that way, but that’s not always the case, sometimes it’s like a matter of learning and reviewing yourself, so I wanted to show that side.

DELAYNE : That’s so true, because my wife is quite an introvert, but she is very charismatic when she turns on the charm so people don’t even realize how much she hates being around people.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : But no, I like the thought of kind of – it’s almost an it gets better premise.

IXTY : It is, yeah, I always want to do that with my fics, in – I have another one, ‘Waiting Outside the Lines’ it’s where they – Waverly, she like, overcomes a fear, and I always want to give a message with what I’m writing because even though it is supposed to like, y'know a lot of people will stay to find themselves represented in something, I always want give a message as well.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : That’s right, that’s good, and it’s a very positive message too. At least it’s a positive message. It would be like, really sucky if it was like, yeah I just want people to walk away from this fic feeling absolutely devastated and fearful that they’ll never accomplish anything with their lives. That’s my goal.

DELAYNE : Oh, no, this is very full of positive message and feels, definitely.

IXTY : It’s what I do for a living so I can’t help it.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, it’s what – oh what – may we enquire what you do?

IXTY : Yes, I run a blog to – instead of going to college I decided to start a blog in which I teach young people to take control of their lives, so that’s why I want to inspire people through fiction as well, because it’s kind of what I want to do, help people, yeah, love themselves. And all that stuff.

DARKWICCAN : What’s the name of your blog?

IXTY : itxayana dot com, which is my full name.

DARKWICCAN : Okay. We’re going to include a link in our show notes for that.

IXTY : Thank you.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, any listeners who might be young, or maybe even not young, just looking for some healthy advice, stop by your blog, if that’s okay.

IXTY : Yeah, that’d be awesome.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely. Continuing on from this – on this train of thought, it gets better, y'know, you can take control of your life, I guess there was never a worry for you when writing Nicole as being less confident, as having y'know social anxiety, as having this mild stutter, there was never a concern for you that it might undermine her decision to into law enforcement?

IXTY : You know what, there wasn’t, because I think – I’m mostly comparing it back to the show, by the way, so I think Nicole in the show was the type of person who kind of feels a fear and does it anyway, y'know. Like when she discovered that, at the end of Season One, that Revenants were real she didn’t get scared, she was handed a shotgun and was ready to fight, y'know?

And so, yeah, and so even though the characters in ‘See You Tomorrow?’ are different, at their core they’re still the same people so Nicole’s the type – in the fic – is the type of person who is obviously nervous, and full of doubt, and lacks confidence, but when it comes to something she cares about she’s willing to go after it anyway. So even though she was probably terrified of becoming a cop, it’s always been something that she really wanted to do, help people, so she pushed through the fear and in, I think, part four, it’s – Nicole finally gets a job as an actual cop and you see her, like she’s a stuttering mess, and Waverly has to calm her down, but she goes anyway because that’s what she really wants to do.

And then also, in the first part where we see, I think, Nicole tries to ask out Waverly like five or six times, and it doesn’t work out, like she – at some point she gets super embarrassed and she just doesn’t go to the coffee shop. And so – but in the end, y'know, despite all her worries and her doubts, she asking Waverly out through her stuttering, y'know, but she doesn’t give up and Waverly was kind enough, y'know, to wait for her because she realized, okay, Nicole’s obviously this type of person, and I’m going to wait for her to ask me out.

And so, Nicole just pushed through the fear and eventually asked her out. So there was no worry, because I knew that I wanted Nicole to be the type of character who felt the fear but it did it.

DELAYNE : I’m just so impressed with the way that you speak, I mean you clearly, yourself, have confidence and you know what you’re talking about. We’re just like sitting over here when you finish talking like, just in awe. It sounds so awkward in here.

[laughter]

IXTY : See me in freshman year high school, I mean.

DELAYNE : So you might have mentioned this in the notes, but I definitely want to ask you about it. What inspired you to continue the series and expand it into a larger arc covering more of their lives? ‘Cause from that first fic it made it seem like it was intended to be a one-shot.

IXTY : Mhm, yeah. So it was – I think it was Louhaught, I think that’s how you pronounce it, she commented on that one-shot – and that was the whole point, I didn’t – because ‘See You Tomorrow?” was actually inspired by another one-shot that I read. And I tried to remember what it was called or who wrote it, and I looked it up but I could not find it, so it was about, it was just Nicole was with like Dolls and Doc at this, I think it was a pie shop, and Waverly’s the waitress, and it’s just like this really cute, short, like two thousand words fluff one-shot, right?

And so I wanted to write something that was just like that. Just like cute, and like didn’t have any story behind it, basically. And so Louhaught commented and was like, I don’t remember what she said but she was like I’d love to sequel, or something of relation to that.

And it’s like once she said that it’s like my mind opened to all these different possibilities that could happen. ‘Cause my mind was so focused on, okay, I’m writing this, and it’s done. And I wasn’t going to write anything more, but then she said that and I was like, I have all these ideas so that’s when I just like kind of started spewing out anything that came out. And, so yeah, it was just her, I wanted to – because it’s always, y'know, it’s about the readers, too, so it’s like maybe I could them happy by writing more.

DELAYNE : Right, and someone opens up that window for you and your brain goes there, man, just take it.

IXTY : Yeah, that’s happened to me.

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah. You gotta follow the muse, the muse wants what the muse wants, absolutely.

IXTY : Yeah, and actually somebody else, after I finished the series, someone asked if me if I could write at some point about them having kids. And I was going to but I think that ending is just so perfect, especially with the words that I ended with, with “See you tomorrow?” which is the way that this started, the idea of adding more, it just didn’t feel right.

DELAYNE : I did – I actually loved that part, that you ended it with “See you tomorrow.”

IXTY : Yeah, thank you.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, really nice way to bring the whole series full circle, and I agree with you there, Ixty, I think that you were absolutely right to end it there.

IXTY : Thank you.

DARKWICCAN : So this series seems like one that you’ve written earlier in your fanfic writing. So how do you think you’ve grown, as an author since then, and to kind of follow up on that, what advice would you give to other authors who are just starting out?

IXTY : So, I wrote this series May of 2017. I think it was May, May/June, something like that, and I, right now, I think that have grown, but there’s little doubt about it, I don’t think I’m great, and I honestly believe that I’m barely thinking I’m good, but I think I have grown technique-wise. It’s – I think that, like, I struggle a lot – my main struggle is I rushed through my writing. It’s terrible, and so like I’ll go into, like I have this bad habit when I’m speaking, in real life too, where I’ll explain what’s so, I’ll say something like so [inaudible] so I’ll say –

DARKWICCAN : So is that you tend to over-explain something when you’re, when you’re –

IXTY : No, it’s not even -

DARKWICCAN : - speaking?

IXTY : - it’s not even that. So, I have a bad habit of starting from the middle of a conversation, like I’ll continue something that we had the day before, and my sisters will literally be like, “Dude, what are talking about?” and I’m like, “Uh, do you not read my mind? Like, how do you not know what I’m talking about?”

And so, I’ll do that when I’m writing where I’ll rush through everything and I’ll think that everyone knows what’s going on in my mind, so I don’t have to explain ever plot, y'know, because I know what’s going on. So I think that I have trouble in that way where I’ll take my time, and I’m still working on it, but I have done better, and I’ll explain in detail, and then also just, I don’t know, like just my writing in general, I think, has just like improved.

I’ve learned to kind of write more about what makes people feel things, whether that be like a physical thing, or an emotional thing. So it’s just like the simple things like if Nicole – if you have Nicole walking down the street, it’s mentioning like – and it’s hot, like it’s mentioning the sun, and the weather, and the sweat dripping down her face, like all those little things matter because it makes the reader feel like they’re right there. And then, emotion side, it’s just like the simple words, like the gasping and the metaphors, y'know? So I think that that’s how I’ve grown, personally.

And as for advice for new authors, I think just write like, this isn’t going to great, it’s going to be write, and off-load. Because you’re going to be – if you think that your writing is going to suck the first time you upload, you’re right. It’s probably going to be terrible because everyone sucks in the beginning. I sucked in the beginning and so, like, you can’t let that fear stop you, you have to upload it anyway, especially because Earpers are so supportive and they’ll comment like such nice things, and they’ll read everything, so you have nothing to fear if you’re writing for Wayhaught.

And then also I think write what feels right. So I recently, I have this fic called ‘Latibule’, right? And so I wrote these – it was really happy in the beginning, and then it got to this really angsty part that was three chapters and I hadn’t realized until I delivered the most chapter, chapter 13, I hadn’t realized that it was actually weighed down. Like it was so angsty, ‘cause it has to do with PTSD, and panic attacks, and I didn’t think that writing it would have such a bad effect on me.

So I actually like I was dreading writing it like I didn’t look forward to it anymore. So I used to upload the chapters like every two weeks, or every week, and then when I started writing these last chapters, like it would take me a month, two months to upload, because even though it felt right in the beginning, what I was doing, I just couldn’t take it anymore.

So I stopped writing because it didn’t feel right to me, and so explained, I was like, you know what, this doesn’t feel right to me and I believe you have to do – you have to write whatever feels the greatest to you, so – because if you’re not doing that then you’re not going to enjoy the writing process, and if you’re not enjoying the writing process then what’s the point? Especially because you’re doing this, like, out of your own time. Like you’re not doing this to get paid, I’m like, you’re not even doing it to get the readers, you’re doing it because you enjoy writing. So just write whatever feels best to you and if something, even mid-way, just feels wrong, then quit because it’s not going to be a good fic.

So those are my two pieces of advice.

DARKWICCAN : So just for clarification’s sake, when you say, “something feels wrong” do you mean feels wrong as in it’s not working for the story, it’s not driving the story, you’ve just sort of gotten stuck into a loop, or feels wrong as in it makes you feel bad while you’re writing?

IXTY : I mean if it makes you feel bad. Because, like this whole ‘Latibule’ example, like it was taking a lot out of me, and I also feared that it was taking a lot out of the readers because it was so angsty. But you know the first thing – what you said first, what was the first thing you said?

DARKWICCAN : The first thing I said was if you’re not driving the story forward, if you’re just sort of stuck in a rut, and you’re not advancing things.

IXTY : Mhm, yeah, that too. That too. If you kind of like, you don’t know where to go next and you’re kind of stuck, it’s okay to pause and is okay to not upload for a month because, like I said, you’re doing it like out of your own free time so if that happens just write something new, you don’t have always write Wayhaught, [inaudible] sometimes there’s other ideas that are blocking you so just get those out before you start up again.

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah, I can absolutely relate to that myself. I’m currently working on a fic that I’m racing to try to complete before Season Three starts, and of course right in the middle of that I had a brainwave for a completely different AU. And I’m like, not now! Not now, brain, now is a bad time for this. But, y'know, like we said, the muse wants what it wants, so, y'know, who knows, maybe I’ll sit down and sketch that out real quick.

So, Ixty, following on from what you were just talking about, do you have anyone looking over your writing before you post it? Do you have beta or just a buddy that reads over your stuff?

IXTY : I didn’t. I literally, until recently, I asked, I tweeted if anyone wanted to read over my fics. I got someone asked me to but a link to – [inaudible] on AO3, as so she edited, she actually edited ‘See You Tomorrow?’ before I re-uploaded it, ‘cause I wanted to make sure it was, y'know, well-written. So, yeah, but I didn’t have anyone before, which I think is the dumbest mistake. Especially because after a while, like re-reading the fic all over again, it gets kind of tiring, especially because I missed mistakes. So it’s like a life-saver.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it is definitely always a good idea, if you’re able to, to see if you can get a beta, whether they’re somebody who’s a practiced or beta or just a buddy, just to re-read. ‘Cause I mean, gosh, the number of times Delayne has saved my butt. I was, oh man –

DELAYNE : I –

DARKWICCAN : - sorry, I have to tell this story real quick, Delayne. There was – so if you listen to the podcast you know that we’re both friends with this writer named Laragh, and Laragh’s been on the show as well a couple times to kinda help host and do interviews. So Laragh wrote this fantastic multi-chapter piece, Wayhaught piece, and she asked me to beta read it and I did. The problem is that I was exhausted when I beta read and I missed the fact that she had accidently used character names from another series.

IXTY : Oh my god, oh my god.

DARKWICCAN : Like I completely missed it and so poor Laragh goes and posts this DW beta approved, y'know, fic up, and Delayne has to come in and go, “You used the wrong name of a character like six times.” And –

DELAYNE : It was just – I thought it was just once.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, was it just once? Okay.

DELAYNE : Yeah, yeah. Knowing that fandom, man, that just stood out to me like woah!

DARKWICCAN : Where did this person come from, why are they hear now? This isn’t that type of fic. So, y'know –

IXTY : Maybe it is. That’d definitely be another advice for any new author, definitely get a beta. One time for I was talking about how Wynonna and Doc where trying to get pregnant, and I accidently used Waverly’s name instead of Wynonna’s, and someone told in the comments, I was like, oh, my gosh.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Akward!

DELAYNE : Right? And when you write something you know how it’s supposed to be and my brain does the auto-fix, so of course I’m going to read it how I expected to–

IXTY : Exactly.

DELAYNE : - write it, not how it actually came out,

DARKWICCAN : And that’s kind of what happened to me when I was beta reading the story is was so in the fandom that I was reading for, and I was also, again very tired. Beta, listen to me: don’t sleep and read, it’s bad. [laughter] Get a good forty winks before you sit down and start beat reading somebody’s thing. But yeah, my brain was auto-correct, and, yeah. So yeah, have beta, have a buddy or two re-read your stuff before you post, if you can. So, okay.

DELAYNE : And its okay to accept some help after you’ve posted, and go back again.

IXTY : Mhm, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, absolutely.

IXTY : That’s what I did for this.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, no, I remember you, when I contacted you and said hey, would you want to come on and talk about this piece you went, “Uh, yeah, hang on, let me re-write it first.”

[laughter]

IXTY : Well, it was terrible, because, oh my goodness. Okay, one more piece of advice: do the research. So in ‘See You Tomorrow?”, so, in Canada you have, police academy is six months. And so because my dumb ass didn’t research, in ‘See You Tomorrow?” I may have set up the two whole years when Waverly and Nicole were dating, Nicole was in school the whole time. So I was just like no, so I had to switch it from school to job, because it was just like, no, this is wrong. So you have to do the research.

DARKWICCAN : Well I’m glad that an EFA pro-tip was helpful for you, that makes me very happy, indeed.

DELAYNE : So I have another question. And going back to when we first started talking and you, how you like to do things differently, so I might know the answer to this already, but why did you chose to have Waverly be from out of town? ‘Cause that’s something also that’s very different from what we see.

IXTY : Yeah, so I wanted to, y'know, play with the side of Waverly that wasn’t tied to the town, or even though she was an Earp that doesn’t have any ties to Wyatt Earp, or her childhood in any way. So I just kind of wanted to have this whole clean slate in which she was – y'know, this sounds terrible, but in the focus I think that Nicole, y'know, in the best way possible, so yeah, I just wanted her to – and then wanted Nicole to be the one to have always the [inaudible]. I just wanted to like play with the characters, even though when we do write is based off of the show, what we write is still fiction, so it doesn’t have to parallel, it doesn’t have to be according to anything that the show does. So I was just like, okay, so what would happen if Waverly was actually from out of town, what react to her being the new person.

DELAYNE : Yeah. Like I said, I sort of had an idea of what the answer might be based on previous answers, but thank you for that clarification.

DARKWICCAN : So, Ixty, of all of the fics that you’ve written so far, do you have a favorite, do have one that you would, y'know, if you were trying to show off your work, one where you’d go, “Hey, new reader person, I want you to read this ‘cause I’m proud of this one.”

IXTY : Oh, my god. I actually really like my one shot ‘Warm Eyes and Jazz’. I’m actually – not to sound like cocky, but I love it so much that I’ve read it like five times. [laughter] I don’t know, I wrote it on a whim, I was in my room writing ‘Latibule’ and even though I love it, I love ‘Latibule’, this one’s kind of my favorite because, so I was listening to jazz on a speaker and it was super loud, and I was just like I was feeling, I think jazz kind of brings out that warm side of you. So I was just like what I get out of that, just right now, I want to write something.

So I started writing it, and usually when I write something I’ll write for a few days, or weeks, whatever, and then I’ll edit for a couple more days, and then I upload it. But this one was just, everything was freeing, so I was listening to jazz, I wrote the one-shot in like two hours, and then the next hour I edited it, and then right after I was done I uploaded it. So there was like no thinking involved, it was just like [snaps fingers] go, go, go, and so, I just I loved the outcome, I loved how everything falled, and it’s just so like simple, there’s no – what’s it called – there’s no like whole story behind it, it was just like what was going on in a moment and how it felt, it was like a wonderful sight painting. So it was just like going straight into it, so I think that one I would recommend because it’s like, life hurts.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I’d have to agree with you, I think I would classify ‘Warm Eyes and Jazz’ which I’ve read and really enjoyed, as a vignette, and it is exactly as you described, it is a very chill, relaxed, warm, kind of smooth – and it feels like a fluffy blanket to wrap yourself in -

IXTY : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - for a couple thousand words, yeah.

IXTY : Do you ever want to read something super sad, read – I don’t know, have you read, I wrote sort a test, ‘Full of Life’, I don’t know if you’ve read it?

DARKWICCAN : No, I haven’t read that one.

IXTY : Well, it’s – I say that the warning is Major Death Character [sic], because I do kill off one of the characters. It’s a one-shot and I think I wrote it very well, ‘cause it’s sad. So if you’re ever in a mood to be, if you’re ever in sad mood and you want to get sadder, because for some reason we like to do that, read that and you will cry. I think like everybody hated me after that.

DARKWICCAN : Aw. Aw. Y'know, though, sometimes it hurts so good. Sometimes you just, you need to read something that’s going to evoke that emotional response from you, ‘cause you just gotta, sometimes you just need to feel that for a minute, y'know?

IXTY : Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t that type of thing. I love happy endings, because it like, y'know, life sucks enough sometimes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

IXTY : So I love writing but happy endings, but this on I was I was just so feeling it, I was like I have to write this one.

DARKWICCAN : You have what the story’s telling you to write, absolutely.

IXTY : Mhm, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so Ixty, it’s been fantastic chatting with you, I’m so thrilled to have you come on, I’m fairly certain that down the line we’ll probably have you back on again, ‘cause you’re just so prolific and you’re writing so much, and again, your work -

IXTY : Thank you so much, I love Wayhaught fic.

DARKWICCAN : Oh good, oh good, this hasn’t been torture, that makes me happy.

IXTY : No, it’s so fun! Especially ‘cause I don’t have a lot of people to talk like.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, right? That is the nice thing about this show, right, you get to geek about the thing that makes you happy, that most people don’t understand.

IXTY : Exactly.

DARKWICCAN : Well the time has come, my friend, to ask you the final question. The question that we ask all of our authors before we close the show, and that is: if you’re stranded on a desert island, and can have only one fanfic to read, what is it?

IXTY : So there are so many great fics out there, but, hands down, ‘In Fate’s Hands.’ It hasn’t been updated since, I don’t know, like last year, but I think it’s so good. I’m in love with the – it like really inspires me to become a better writer, because I just think it’s that good. Like the plot behind it, the whole Waverly being awful, and Nicole being this rebel, and kind of like fighting her way to get from there. I would have that one, and it’s a Wayhaught fic, if no-one’s read it before, it’s really my favorite.

DARKWICCAN : So that’s ‘In Fate’s Hands’ by skillzyo and TheGaySmurf.

IXTY : Yeah, love it, I swear, I recommend it, 10/10.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, both of those authors are fantastic, obviously we’ve had Smurf on the program twice before, she will inevitable be on once again, and I look forward to wrangling skillzyo onto the show at some point as well. So, excellent choice. Well, again, Ixty, thanks so much for taking time out of your evening to chat with us tonight and again I look forward to watching you continue to grow as an author and I cannot wait to see how ‘Latibule’ finishes and what you’ve got for us next.

IXTY : Awesome, well again, thank you so much for having me, for all the nice things you said, I guess that was really validating, especially just having me on here, you asked me it’s like, so happy.

DARKWICCAN : Well, that is what we’re here for. So I’m glad it worked.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Thanks for joining us. Tremendous thanks to Itxy for joining us to discuss her fic series: ‘See You Tomorrow?’ Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Playful by Erik Barone; Ruse of an Ooze and Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you’re listening on ITunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast
> 
> We're also on iTunes!


	13. People Let Me Tell Ya 'Bout My Best Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week BFF's DarkWiccan and Delayne spend the episode discussing their four favorite 'WynHaught' BrOTP fics! Then they chat with author isawET to talk about her fic - 'Lucky Dutch'!

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/people-let-me-tell-ya-bout-my-best-friend)

 

Read the Fics!

 

[rough beginnings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6855973) by Timballisto 

[Because we're just kids, really](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12229434) by LambSauced 

[The Hard Way Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12956079) by flyingfanatic 

[lucky dutch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7429593) by isawet  

 

  

isawET's Desert Island Fic: [‘Let My Demons Lie’](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10379526) by TheGaySmurf, aka ‘Sad Puppies’ 

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT BY FLYINGFANATIC

 

EFA EPISODE 12 – PEOPLE LET ME TELL YA BOUT MY BEST FRIEND

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host DarkWiccan and with me is my co-host -

LARAGH : Hey, it’s Laragh!

DARKWICCAN : Laragh? What are – where’s – what did you do to Delayne? Where’d she go?

LARAGH : I killed her, and I’ve stashed her in the closet.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, my god. And she had such a hard time coming out of the closet. [laughter] Laragh, did you have to do that to her?

LARAGH : Yes, it was cathectic.

DARKWICCAN : Okay. Okay, nobody died, Laragh didn’t kill anybody, let me just make everything clear, don’t worry, Delayne is perfectly fine, and well, and alive. But she is unfortunately unable to record this segment of the show, so Laragh had lovingly offered to step in and pinch hit in Delayne’s absence. Delayne will be back for the author interview segment, for the second half of the show, but Laragh, I am really excited to have you here for this one.

LARAGH : I’m excited to be here.

DARKWICCAN : And you know why, because this episode is dedicated to the Wynaught BroTP. Which is all about friendships, right?

LARAGH : Yep, yep.

DARKWICCAN : And you and Delayne are two of my closest, closest buddies.

LARAGH : Yeah, I mean, you’re alright.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] You sound – well, what was that? [laughter] That didn’t sound sincere at all.

LARAGH : No, no, for sure, I’m so happy to be here for a friendship episode.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. So it’s cool that kind of my two best buds are going to be in this episode with me and that makes me very, very happy. So, mleh.

Okay, so, anyway, moving right along, my friend. As we do with most episode where we’re talking about a general theme we have four fanfics to discuss today. And some of them are a little more BroTP heavy than others, but they all have that very strong Wynaught BroTP friendship between Wynonna Earp and Nicole Haught. They have that strong element, whether it’s the A-plot or B-plot.

And, of course, as usual, we try to select incredibly well-written work to talk about on the show as well, and I think that we have ticked that box for the most part with these four.

LARAGH : Yeah, I would definitely agree.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome. I’m glad that you agree. So why don’t we kick this party off? And since you are my guest co-host I’m going to graciously give you the floor first.

LARAGH : Thank you. Okay, so starting off I pick – well, these are Delayne’s picks but I read them and enjoyed all of them, so the first one is 'rough beginnings' by Timballisto? I believe is the name?

DARKWICCAN : Mhm. Yeah, yeah.

LARAGH : So this is a short fic, I think it’s about two thousand words, and bringing us right back to mid-season one, the episode - episode seven which was ‘Walkin’ After Midnight’, which people listening might remember as the “top shelf” episode.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, that’s right.

LARAGH : Where Nicole – which was a very Wynaught BroTP heavy episode.

DARKWICCAN : I think that was actually the beginning of the Wynaught BroTP.

LARAGH : Yes! I think definitely. Getting drunk in Nedley’s office, or in the police station, was definitely the start of a somewhat tumultuous friendship that went up and down. [laughter] Well, that episode just kind of put you right bang smack there, and deals with Nicole learning about the supernatural goings on, and I believe it was written right after that particular episode aired. So it’s very much speculative fiction, and it’s full of great Wynonna/Nicole moments and general teasing.

DARKWICCAN : General banter, yeah. So they end up kind of, the author, again, they were speculating, ‘cause they were writing this between episodes…

LARAGH : Seven and eight.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And so they were speculating what was going to happen in episode eight, so this picks up with them both kidnapped and bound in a room together.

LARAGH : [laughter] Yes.

DARKWICCAN : What?

LARAGH : No.

DARKWICCAN : What?

LARAGH : Nothing. Nothing, I’m just thinking about how different that fic could gone if it was – um – nothing.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Well luckily it didn’t go in a weird direction.

LARAGH : No, it stuck with the BroTP, I’m grateful for that.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, absolutely.

LARAGH : Yeah, I just, I really liked it, I liked that even though I love oblivious Wynonna, I kind of like that Wynonna picked more up on the relationship between them and was like, my favorite line Wynonna says something like, “You’re half in love with Waverly and you haven’t even been on a date yet.” And then references U-Hauling, which I love that Wynonna knows about U-Hauling.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, exactly, I thought that was pretty funny too, that Wynonna would understand the concept of U-Hauling and be able to use it as a quip in Haught’s general direction. I thought that was pretty great.

LARAGH : Exactly.

DARKWICCAN : I also enjoyed the Doc/Waverly team up in this story.

LARAGH : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Because they end up sort of teaming up to save the day.

LARAGH : I think that a lesser utilized BroTP, but still a very good one.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, and you know what, I find that a little surprising because on the series, especially in Season One, even though it was contentious, Doc and Waverly relationship, to kind of start – well, it was more that Waverly thought she could trust – had a good feeling about Doc, and then she was like, “Oh no, you’re a liar, you lie about everything all the time, like that’s your thing, you’re a lying liar, you liar!” [laughter]

LARAGH : That was a good impression.

DARKWICCAN : Thank you. Thanks. Channeling my Waverly Earp right there. But I think that there is that sort of, kind of mild BroTP happening with Doc and Waverly, I think it’s sort of canon and yeah, I’m with you, you don’t see it utilized often in fic, but I thought it was used to excellent effect here with this one.

LARAGH : I concur.

DARKWICCAN : Another thing I like about this one is how there’s a moment where Nicole mentally decides that yeah, maybe dealing with the Earps is above her pay grade as a rookie police officer. “Oh, screw this.”

LARAGH : I think there was probably several points throughout Season One where Nicole was just like, “I’m out.” [laughter] And then Waverly would come along and she’d be like, “Okay, I’m back in.”

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, because by the end of the story, of course, she’s right back to square one on that.

LARAGH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : After, y'know, after the dust has settled and everything, she’s like, “You know what? Yeah, okay, I realize now that I will do anything for these women.” [laughter] But yeah, this was cute little – well, not cute –

LARAGH : Yeah, I at first described it as short and sweet, but it is most definitely not short and sweet, it is short and like violently aggressive.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter] Exactly, I was going to say cute isn’t that right word for this one. It is a very quick read, but it’s very fun and action-packed. How about that? It’s an action-packed read.

LARAGH : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, lots of great banter between Wynonna and Nicole, especially. So yeah, that was 'rough beginnings' by Timballisto. I think it’s a good one to start with, too, ‘cause it is, I think, the shortest of the four of them, and it does sort dive right into that Wynaught BroTP situation.

LARAGH : I like that I was just landed in the middle of the action.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, absolutely. I love it when writers start _in media res_ , it’s just like, hold onto your seat, here we go! Y'know?

LARAGH : You know the fancy technical things.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah. That I learned in tenth grade English. [laughter] So, okay, so that is, again, as I said, that was 'rough beginnings' by Timballisto, which rolls us right along into the next fic of our four, and this one is my first pick. And it’s called 'Because We're Just Kids, Really' by Lambsauced.

LARAGH : Love that username, first of all.

DARKWICCAN : That is a great name.

LARAGH : You ever wonder where people got their usernames from?

DARKWICCAN : Oh, always. Oh, constantly. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There are quite a few names where I’m like, well that’s interesting. I wonder what that means. And of course it’s probably something just completely inane or some sort of irreverent inside joke that, y'know, the author their own like tiny little circle of friends are in on.

But yeah, so 'Because We're Just Kids, Really' by Lambsauced. Now this is a story that’s following Nicole, and Waverly, and Wynonna from childhood to college, and probably beyond. It’s an unfinished piece at this point, they left off at college.

Now, before I dive into this one, I do want to say that I really enjoy this story but it is a little problematic for me. And it’s not necessarily problematic in its structure, or concept, I think both of those are well executed. What gets me is that the author is from the UK and, uh, and they put a note at the top of their story where they say, “Look, I’m from the UK, so –“

LARAGH : I mean that line is “Please don’t judge me, I’m British.” Which I think is hilarious.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, which –

LARAGH : I think it’s a tag line they should go around with for life, just “Please don’t judge me, I’m British.”

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and – [laughter] and I’m not judging them because they’re British. They choose not to adapt their language to North American English, essentially.

LARAGH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So they’re using a lot of Britishisms and British slang, and that drives me up the wall as a reader, it really –

LARAGH : It does for me, as well. Incredibly. Particularly when they will note something, like, “Oh I said this word instead of this word because I’m British”, which means that they actively know that they’re using the wrong word -

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, yeah.

LARAGH : - but they’re doing it anyway.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and honestly I don’t think that Lambsauced was doing it intentionally, I think that they were just writing in the language that they know best. It doesn’t look like they have a beta, so and the thing is that is such an excellent concept, and it’s generally well executed, the writing is good, it’s good writing. So when you have good, or even occasionally great writing and then you have these terms that pop in that pull you out of this world that this writer’s working so hard to create. It’s – they’re doing themselves a disservice, and it’s not helpful to their audience, either, in staying in the world that they’re building.

So, y'know, I’m frustrated because I really, really enjoy this story, I just wish that they had a American beta, or beta or was familiar with American and Canadian terms and slang to kind of help them out.

There’s also quite a lot of spelling and usage errors. This is one of those fics where I actually struggled to decide not only am I going to bring this up on the show and talk about it, because I do really love this story so much, I’m going to say that over and over again, ‘cause it just sounds like I’m just beating it to heck, but I do really, really love this story. But it was one of those things where am I gonna not only recommend on the show, but am I going to recommend it on the Twitter feed, because, y'know, we do have our very limited rules of engagement as far as what we’re going to post. And one of the things is as long as fic doesn’t have too many usage and spelling errors, y'know, for the most part, we’ll recommend it. And this one really had me going, “Oh, man, it’s so good, but.”

LARAGH : Yeah, it’s frustrating when you can see the potential.

DARKWICCAN : Exactly, exactly. So Lambsauced, if you’re listening to this, I know it sounds like I’m coming down on you kind of hard. I’m not meaning to, again, I love this story, if I didn’t love this story I would be talking about it here on the podcast. But you probably would benefit from finding a beta reader to just kind of give your work a pass over before posting. ‘Cause honestly, there’s not a whole lot that needs to be done to the seven chapters that are currently up to fix these issues, that are really small but ultimately, y'know, kind of accumulative, and become kind of bigish.

LARAGH : Well you don’t want your work to be distracting in the wrong way.

DARKWICCAN : Exactly, exactly. Like, for example, using the wrong character name from another fandom, and your beta doesn’t catch it ‘cause she was half asleep when she read your stuff, and then your other friend had to catch it, and –

LARAGH : When it was already published!

DARKWICCAN : I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry about that. I’m just going to keep apologizing for that for like the entirety of our friendship from now on. [laughter]

But anyway, so back to what’s great about this story, 'Because We're Just Kids, Really' by Lambsauced. Lambsauced does a really great job of capturing all three of the girls at these different stages of life. Writing kids is not easy, and you can smell someone who hasn’t dealt with kids, or doesn’t have kids, writing for kids, a mile off.

But eight-year-old Waverly and Nicole read, to me, as eight-year-olds. And I’ve taught eight-year-olds, y'know, doing theatre workshops and whatnot, and it’s like yeah, this reads accurate to me. And so because they’re so believable I was immediately drawn in, y'know, all the other issues notwithstanding, I was immediately drawn in, and their relationship is so honest, and pure, and good.

And when Waverly and Nicole sort of naturally drift apart as they grow, which happens, y'know, they had different interests and they went in different directions, and Wynonna stepped into sort of take Waverly’s place as Nicole’s best friend. Their relationship was just so true to them, and their characters, and sort of their core principles of who they are as established in canon, but then extrapolated on and made even more real, y'know, in imagining them as teenagers becoming young adults.

And it’s really great to see this really strong, protective streak on both sides. You’ve got Nicole who is incredibly protective of Wynonna, and Waverly still, but she’s also, you’ve got Wynonna who’s incredibly protective of both Nicole and Waverly. And so when it gets to the point, eventually, that Waverly and Nicole do come back around to each other, and in a more romantic way than they were when they were eight, you have this great conflict of Wynonna being like, “I don’t know who I’m supposed to threaten.”

LARAGH : That is my favorite line in the entire –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah! [laughter]

LARAGH : “I’m confused, I don’t know which one I need to threaten.”

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, exactly!

LARAGH : It’s so like irreverent, but also extremely like, real. Like she means it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, exactly, exactly. “Who am I supposed to threaten with a shotgun? Like, darn it.” [laughter] But that wouldn’t work, that moment wouldn’t have worked if Lambsauced hadn’t done such a terrific job of character building with these – with the girls. So it’s, again, that’s why I’m talking about it on the show, because it really is a really good story, excellent concept, good execution. Just needs a little help with some clean up.

LARAGH : Yeah. And you know, she really gets that character development in in quite a short space of writing. Like you – it doesn’t waffle, y'know, it’s a few chapters that are not by any means incredibly lengthy, but you’re there, you feel it, y'know, you feel that it’s true.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, Lambsauced has this wonderful economy of words where she is able to communicate all of these concepts briefly but still fully. Everything is still fully realized, even though we’re not – this isn’t like a two hundred thousand word story, at seven chapters we’re only at about thirty-five k, at seven chapters, and yet still she’s managed to convey all of these details, and elements, and core principles about these people, and it’s just – again, it’s so good! Just get a beta!

LARAGH : Yeah. I think that almost everyone should have a beta, even if you’re, y'know, one of the best writers in the fandom, you can always benefit from a beta, from a second pair of eyes, y'know. There’s no shame in having a beta, at all.

DARKWICCAN : No, I think actually having a beta is a sign of your desire to do the best work you can as a writer.

LARAGH : I concur.

DARKWICCAN : I’m glad we agree on this point, Laragh, it’s very important to me. Okay, so that’s enough out of me on 'Because We're Just Kids, Really' by Lambsauced. What do you have next on your list there, Laragh?

LARAGH : So the next one I have is ‘The Hard Way Home’ by flyingfanatic.

DARKWICCAN : Ah, yes. Before you continue I do have to provide a quick disclaimer here. Flyingfanatic is our lead transcriber for the podcast.

LARAGH : I didn’t know that, that’s amazing. You produce great work.

DARKWICCAN : She does fantastic work.

LARAGH : I’m really glad that you guys do that, and you recognize the Hard of Hearing community within your podcast, I think it’s really important.

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah, inclusivity is hugely, hugely important. But I did want to throw that disclaimer out and say that Delayne did not – again, the two fics that Laragh’s talking about are actually Delayne’s picks, when she didn’t know that she wasn’t going to be able to do this segment recording – so Delayne did not pick ‘Hard Way Home’ because it’s flyingfanatic. She picked it because it’s a really good story that’s just awesome. So anyway, so anyway, so Laragh, what did you think of it?

LARAGH : Okay. So immediately, I was looking at this fic I was like, “This isn’t my kind of fic.” Don’t, y'know, I’m going to read it because I have to read it, but it’s not really my kind of fic, and oh, my god, it was so my kind of fic. [laughter]

It was so good! I would normally very, very, very rarely read speculative fiction about that kind of stuff because I just, yeah, I just prefer to kind of stick to canon mostly. And y'know, I kind of think, oh well, they’re going to write this whole fic and then Season Three will happen and it’s going to be irrelevant, and I just, yeah. I don’t give it the time it deserves, but I gave this one the time because you forced me to, and I’m so glad you did because, yeah, oh, my god, I’m like, they could have just – that could be the Season Three arc and it would fit perfectly.

DARKWICCAN : Right? So why don’t you, just real quickly, give us the premise for this story.

LARAGH : So basically it picks up after Season Two ends, and it picks up with Mama Earp coming back into the fray and how, y'know, we have Bobo dealing with delivering Waverly to Bulshar, and we have, y'know, like I said, Mama Earp coming back in, and the betrayal Waverly feels over Wynonna knowing about Mama Earp, and then there’s a whole other thing with Nicole and what Bulshar’s ring means, that I don’t want to spoil, but oh, my god. Just, yeah. It’s literally just it picks up right after Season Two, and it speculates on what everything that we are all so confused about as we wait for Season Three could mean.

DARKWICCAN : Right. And, again, treading carefully so as not to spoil the reveal with Nicole here, it’s that – well, of course, the speculation within the fandom is that she or her family have something to do, or had something to do with Bulshar’s Cult in the past. And that’s sort of the case here, but it was certainly nothing that happened voluntarily.

LARAGH : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I know, mum’s the word, yes, mmm.

LARAGH : Yes, I’m certainly, nothing, I think that has been speculated within the fandom, and certainly nothing I’ve read.

DARKWICCAN : No.

LARAGH : Not any of the big theories that are out there, like –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

LARAGH : - ‘cause I hadn’t even heard, maybe it has been and I like missed it, but I had not heard of this at all before I read this.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, no, I haven’t either, I haven’t seen it on Tumblr, on Twitter, any of the usual haunts where speculation like this is sort of discussed and chatted about, and I think it’s an incredibly original idea. I would be shocked if it’s even close to what the actual writers of the show are coming up with, ‘cause you know Emily, you just you can’t speculate with Emily because it’s going to be completely out of left of left field and no one will see it coming at all.

LARAGH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Whatever it is.

LARAGH : There’ll be many spit-takes in Season Three, as we walk.

DARKWICCAN : I thought you said there’ll be many takes in Season Three, and I’m like, like filming takes? Like they’re going to just kind of keep re-taking the same shot over and over again? What do you mean? Anyway, what other elements of this story stood out to you?

LARAGH : So you know what was so important for me with this is it’s really humorous. For me –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

LARAGH : - that like makes or breaks a fic. If it’s funny, even if it’s maybe not my style, I’ll stick with it for the humor. And when you’re writing Wynonna you’re kind of forced to provide some humor, and I think that’s probably what makes –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

LARAGH : - the Wynaught BroTP fics so much fun, is the fact they’re really so humorous.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yes, and my – one of my favorite calamities to have ever befallen Nicole, whether on the show or in fic, and I know it’s weird to say “I enjoy it when a calamity befalls Nicole” but this is a humorous calamity. But seriously, it is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read, and I am so surprised that no other authors have come up with this first. And, essentially, Nicole is the accidental victim of a spell that was meant for Wynonna. And you know everyone jokes about Nicole being a puppy? She’s literally a puppy. She’s literally a puppy! [laughter] And doesn’t she turn into like an Irish Setter or something, some sort of like ginger dog?

LARAGH : With her hair, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter] And that was just absolutely brilliant, I can’t stop laughing about it because it’s so funny. I love the fact that when she finally – when it gets sorted out, and I don’t really think we’re spoiling anything because this whole thing follows a, y'know, a larger A-plot, really, this is just sort of a side-trip. When it finally gets sorted out and she’s back to herself, she’s like, “Make sure next time I get turned into a cat.” [laughter] So I just, props to Fly, that was absolutely brilliant, just brilliant, to take that chatter within the fandom and to turn it into something.

LARAGH : I love that, I love when authors kind of make in-jokes with the rest of us.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think those are some of the most fun stories to read, when you feel like you’re in on the joke with the writer, and they’re using the language of the fandom. It’s a little extra special. Might not hold up over time, ultimately, but –

LARAGH : No, but I mean I think the best ones are when they worked it in in way that it still looks organic, even if you don’t know.

DARKWICCAN : Right, yeah.

LARAGH : Makes you laugh harder.

DARKWICCAN : It does make you – yeah. And that’s absolutely Fly, that’s what flyingfanatic does here, she absolutely, y'know, incorporates this spell that really, if you were to just read the story and not know about this in-joke within the fandom, it would still work perfectly within the story. As you say, it’s organic.

LARAGH : Yep.

DARKWICCAN : Ah, okay, so that, I think that’s enough to say about ‘Hard Way Home’, because we don’t really wanna give away too much. My gosh, the whole idea behind Nicole’s backstory is so clever. It’s so clever. But we’re not going to give it away.

LARAGH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Because you need to read it.

LARAGH : It’s finished, isn’t it? I’m pretty sure that one is a finished fic.

DARKWICCAN : It is, it is seven out of seven chapters, done.

LARAGH : Yeah, so people, go and read that. There’s nothing stopping you, seriously, it’s – I think it’s about thirty, thirty thousand words, something like that. It’s not super long, you will not have to take a big chunk out of your life to read it, you will just – I love fics where you can literally just sit down and read an entire full-bodied story in one sitting.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely, me too, I agree. So yeah, ‘Hard Way Home’ by flyingfanatic. Okay. Which brings us to our final fic selection of our Wynaught BroTP themed episode, and that is 'lucky dutch' by isawET. And again, I have to thank TheGaySmurf for correcting my pronunciation of their name, because I, for the longest time, thought it was is-a-wet.

LARAGH : Yes, me too. Until you said it in the show, I was like, “Oh that’s how you pronounce their name.”

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And this is not only a Wynaught BroTP, it is also a Hogwarts AU.

LARAGH : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Which is a lot of fun.

LARAGH : Yes, yes, again, at some point I probably would have skimmed past. Not that I dislike _Harry Potter_ , but I just maybe wouldn’t have, y'know, wouldn’t have necessarily sought it out, and it’s good. It’s good.

LARAGH : It is quite good. My understanding is this actually started off as a Tumblr prompt and sort of became a small monster from there. Essentially, the story follows, again Wynonna, Nicole, and Waverly through school, only in this case school happens to be Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy. Nicole is a muggle-born witch, I guess, right? Yeah, she’s a muggle-born witch and she gets her letter and finds herself immersed in this whole new world of magic, much like Harry Potter did in the original books by J.K. Rowling. And in this case, instead of meeting Ron and Hermione on her first day, she meets Wynonna Earp. [laughter] And a friendship is immediately born. Well, it’s not immediate, but –

LARAGH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - but it’s pretty quick.

LARAGH : So, yeah, oh my god, this fic. I just, I had no idea what was going on for the vast majority of it. I felt like I was just running around them in circles screaming “What’s happening, what’s happening, what’s happening?” But I loved it and I just kept reading it.

DARKWICCAN : You know, there’s something that isawET does in this story that I’ve not seen any other authors do, and I wonder if it’s because she is just really relying on the knowledge of the fandom that’s going to be reading the story. Because she gets Wynonna and Nicole’s friendship established and shows most of Year One, and part of Year Two, and then it just jumps to their Year Five.

LARAGH : Yeah, and Waverly is just there.

DARKWICCAN : She’s just there. Waverly’s just there! And it’s like she’s been there, she’s established, she’s friends already with Nicole. Y'know, she’s been in school with them for a couple of years at this point and it was just like, woah, y'know? And the thing is, is that’s something that you can’t do like in original fiction.

LARAGH : No.

DARKWICCAN : You have to actually introduce a character, and then establish who they are, and then build the relationships. In this case, it’s just like, “Well, you guys know who Waverly is, so here she is!” [laughter]

LARAGH : I like that. Why not? We all know who Waverly is.

DARKWICCAN : Why not? I mean it –

LARAGH : Yeah, y'know, it worked for her, so do it. Y'know, why not?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I mean it would only work in fanfiction, and again it’s a device I’ve never seen used before, so I’m actually interested to ask isawET about it and find out, y'know, if that was a plan. Like, I’m just going to, [snaps fingers] y'know, everybody knows who this character is, so I’m just gonna plop them right in and just carry on, like nothing to see here, nothing to see. You know who this person is, we don’t need to talk about it. [laughter] But, yeah, I’m interested to kind of find out where that device came from because I’ve never – it’s totally available to fanfic authors – but I’ve never seen it used. So, y'know, it was kind of actually fun it was like –

LARAGH : Yeah, we’re trying to work out how close –

DARKWICCAN : Right?

LARAGH : - are they, how, y'know, what is their – it’s kind of, you’re almost working backwards to figure out their relationship. But that’s interesting, that’s different, you know, it changes things up a bit, why not, like let’s do that, let’s use some different literary devices and change up our fanfiction. It’s exciting, it’s fun.

DARKWICCAN : It is, it is. And in this case, it works, so why not, like you were saying a minute ago. It’s a tool in your toolbox, why not use it.

LARAGH : I feel like we’re saying “why not” a lot.

DARKWICCAN : Well, I mean, why not?

LARAGH : Why not?

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : It is the Wynaught BroTP epsidoe.

LARAGH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Again, I just really enjoyed the way isawET really shows the ride or die –

LARAGH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - the nature of Nicole and Wynonna’s friendship, to the point where –

LARAGH : And also how it relates to Waverly.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, absolutely how it relates to Waverly, but here’s the thing; I don’t think that Nicole would have agreed to the things she agreed to when she was just, what, twelve years old?

LARAGH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : She wouldn’t have agreed to it if she wasn’t ride or die for Wynonna, because she didn’t know Waverly at that point.

LARAGH : This is true, that’s a good point.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So really to start Nicole is absolutely ride or die for Wynonna, almost from the very beginning of their friendship with each other. So that’s impressive friendship right there, man.

LARAGH : That is an impressive friendship, yeah, for sure.

DARKWICCAN : So I have a bunch of questions for this author, isawET. I know Delayne does too. Again, Laragh, thank you so much for sitting in for Delayne for this first half of the show, I really appreciate it, she appreciates it, and I always, always enjoy chatting with you.

LARAGH : Well, you too.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, we actually did manage to get isawET to agree to speak with us for the interview segment, which we’ll get to after our break. [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Best Friend by Harry Nilsson, cover by the Tinseltown Singers

DARKWICCAN : And welcome back everyone to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, Darkwiccan, and with me, as always, is my co-host –

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we are so excited to have with us for our second segment today the author of the incredible Hogwarts AU slash Wynaught BroTP mini-epic 'lucky dutch': isawET. She also goes by the name sunspill on Tumblr, but here with us today she’s asked us to call her Aly. Aly, welcome to the show.

ALY : Hi, thanks for inviting me on the show.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, absolutely. There was really no chance that you weren’t going to be invited on the show, my friend.

DELAYNE : Yeah, pretty much. There’s many that we could have picked from.

DARKWICCAN : So, yeah, so basically the inevitability of you coming on the show was 100%, because we are both big fans of your writing.

ALY : Thank you so much.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, you’re very, very welcome. So, how did you get into writing Wayhaught fanfiction?

ALY : I was on Twitter and I was like, everything is so depressing on television and I don’t want to watch it anymore, and my friend tweeted me, “You should watch _Wynonna Earp_.” And I was like, okay, it has women, it’s sci-fi, and then I went online and Googled it, and the first kiss had already happened so I was like I’m totally down. And I watched like two episodes, no, two or three episodes, and I wrote the first thing that I wrote for the fandom, and then it kind of went from there.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, it’s so funny to me how when it comes introducing friends to _Wynonna Earp_ , because so many of my friends aren’t part of the LGBT community, I always have to kind of, y'know, really push the _Wynonna Earp_ “crazy chick with a gun” side of it. But the minute I’m on like Tumblr of something like that, and chatting, y'know ‘cause I’m basically on gay Tumblr, I think we all are on gay Tumblr and gay Twitter, it’s like:

“There’s this great new television show!”

“Okay, but are there lesbians?”

“Well…”

“Are there lesbians? Yes? I’m watching it.”

DELAYNE : Pretty much how I’ve chosen my most recent shows is “Oh, there’s lesbians? Okay, I’ll give it a try.”

DARKWICCAN : “I am here because I am gay.” Yeah. [laughter] Okay, so that’s how you got into Wayhaught. Did you write for other fandoms before you got into Wynonna Earp?

ALY : Yeah, I’ve been around, I’ve been writing since like high school, or college. And then I started writing like slightly, I don’t if like more seriously is the right word, but kind of being more into it, just like having more fun with it, and then like, as I like to say as it became progressively gayer, things – it became more fun as I switched to kind of, from writing for generic pairings, or even slash pairings, to writing femslash I was like, oh no, this is what is really cool. So yeah, I’ve been in a couple of other fandoms, but mostly right now I’m in _Wynonna Earp_ , and like Clexa, and maybe _Supergirl_ , stuff like that.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome. And so, for this particular fic we’re talking about today, ‘lucky dutch’, you did a fantastic _Wynonna Earp/Harry Potter_ universe mash-up, but before we get into talking about that, I’m curious: are there any AU scenarios, like crazy AU scenarios, that you’ve wanted to try just for the fun of it?

ALY : There is something I like, sometimes I think about and I have like notes on it, but I’m so just lazy and stuff. But like I don’t know if it’s an AU – it’s an AU, but it’s more of a time travel and like, I like the idea – it was before they had it on the show, but I just I like the idea of kind of like Waverly getting maybe unstuck in time and kind of figuring out how to find her, and like maybe even before they kind of get together. I’m not sure how it would fit in like the canon, ‘cause I thought of it super early when I was watching, but I really like time travel, and I really like the pining and like the “oh, I’m sad”.

And it would be like, [laughter] I also really like Wynonna and Nicole kind of having adventures and bonding over like, not only like their shared interest in Waverly, obviously, but kind of like a more foundational friendship just between them.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and I would love to read that, I would love to read a crazy time travel piece from you, with an epic Wynaught BroTP element, ‘cause you are really, really excellent with bringing the BroTP. [laughter] So speaking of it, let’s dive in – they are fun, right? Let’s dive into talking about the fic that brings us here today, ‘lucky dutch’.

DELAYNE : So in your notes, y'know, ‘cause this is a crossover with _Harry Potter_ , you mention you’re a little worried about the hardcore _Potter_ fans, so I was curious if it was hard to write a crossover in a fandom that you didn’t seem as familiar with?

ALY : It was hard, but not maybe as hard as I should have thought it was, just because I have this attitude of like whatever I feel like, like it’s fanfiction, I’m just going to do what I want.

DELAYNE : [laughter] That’s the best answer ever.

ALY : Like, I don’t really care if it like necessarily matches canon, like it’s a fanfiction story about lesbians, like the literary police should not be on my door about it. But – [laughter] I did try – like obviously I’m familiar with the _Harry Potter_ universe, like I grew up when they were popular, and I did read like some of the books when I was a kid, and I’ve seen all the movies, but I was never super obsessed with it. So I wasn’t necessarily following like learning the canon and remembering it. And I did Google things, so I made sure that like whatever spells I used where from like the _Harry Potter_ wiki or whatever. But some of it I was like, eh, I just don’t care if that’s like the way that words work in the _Harry Potter_ novels.

But also the second and third chapters, you’ve had her on, TheGaySmurf? I actually met her while I was writing this and she came on to help me like do better, and she’s like really good at remembering details and like world building stuff, and I was always like messaging her like, I still message her like, “How old, like what’s the age difference between these three characters, like do we know this?” and she’s like “Yes, remember, you saw that episode” and I’m like “No, I don’t remember”. So she was great and she also is familiar with Harry Potter too, so she was a huge, huge –

DELAYNE : Yeah I was definitely, I was wondering how much research you did go into, y'know, how much extra research other than just pulling from what you knew, so.

ALY : I did the Harry Potter wiki for at least twenty minutes. [laughter] Then I was like, this is not a productive use of my time. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : No, no, that had to have been at least, whether you realized it or not at time, that had to have been at least somewhat productive. Any research is good research.

ALY : Right, yeah.

DELAYNE : Did you have any commenters, or anyone y'know message you, say, that were hardcore _Harry Potter_ fans that said like, “Uh, dude, you got this wrong”?

ALY : No one was like mean about it, but some people were like “I’m confused, like why did this happen?” And I was like, “’Cause I’m making things up.” [laughter] And, but no one was like mean about it, but there were definitely some people who were like, “What is a ward?” And I was like, “Well, I don’t know if that exists in Harry Potter, I’ve read some like other urban fantasy and I was like it’s all magic, who cares?” But I keep having to realize that people like really do care, but not me, and trying to like be more mindful or like put things in tags, or before notes, so people aren’t like coming in with expectations that are not going to be met.

DARKWICCAN : Expectations and pitchforks.

ALY : Yes. I also have a lot of trouble like remembering my own writing, like I’ve forgotten that I’ve written things, and people talk to me about it. Or like, actually, I was trying to re-read this one, ‘cause I was like I don’t remember what happened, so I could like talk about it, and while I was re-reading I realize I used the same quote in multiple chapters, because I forgot that I’d already used it. Like talking about pancakes, like stuff from the show, I was like, I should put that in there, it’s in the show, but I like already had so that – if anyone noticed, and are like how come she -

DELAYNE : I actually, yeah –

ALY : - keeps saying this.

DELAYNE : - murder a stack of pancakes, that did come up -

ALY : Yeah, it’s because –

DELAYNE : - twice.

ALY : - it’s because I forgot that I did it the first time.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : But, y'know, I thought it was a motif, I thought it was just a running gag that you were just returning to –

DELAYNE : I thought it was purposeful!

DARKWICCAN : - repeatedly.

ALY : I should go with that, probably. [laughter] It’s gone better since Smurf has started helping me, she sometimes is like, “You know you already did this” or “This contradicts something else that you’ve already said” and I’ve also started like doing outlines. Like, I’m improving as a person, but. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yes, outlines open a whole new world, don’t they? ‘Cause then you’re like, oh, that’s right, this was supposed to happen after that –

ALY : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - and then this thing.

ALY : It’s much better, I recommend them.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so you’ve heard it here, guys, Aly’s pro tip: outlines.

ALY : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : They’re good, man.

ALY : Or just, if you can remember your own writing, that’s a great help.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : I feel better that I -‘cause I, yeah. I forget a lot of stuff too, so that makes me so happy, that I’m not the only one.

DARKWICCAN : Alright, so this actually brings up a question in me. So you say that you forget what you’ve written, and at the time you writing this story, ‘lucky dutch’, you weren’t working off of an outline?

ALY : No, I was not. Clearly.

DARKWICCAN : So you do this thing where, in the story, you do a really great job of establishing Nicole and Wynonna’s ride or die friendship. But once you do that you skip from second year to fifth year and suddenly Waverly appears in the narrative, and –

ALY : Yes, I saw that question and I was like, uh, they’re like calling me out. [laughter] When I started writing this, it was a Tumblr prompt. I’d written one thing that was at that time like the most comments I had ever gotten, like it was super exciting, for Wayhaught, and so people were actually sending me Tumblr prompts, and one of them was like, “Can you, like what would you think about _Harry Potter_?”

And I wrote like a couple of scenes from the first chapter as disconnected, separate prompts. And when I was like  oh, I actually enjoyed this, I would like to do something longer with it, that sort of became chapter one and that’s why most of the plot happens like later in the story, but when I was writing it I was like, oh, like I never wrote them meeting.

And I don’t like writing children because I work with children and I think it’s really hard to write them accurately, and it like bugs me when they’re not written accurately, because I like spend so much time around them.

DARKWICCAN : Common pet peeve, yeah.

ALY : Yeah, so I was like uh, and also like it’s just not as interesting to me to write children, ‘cause like, y'know, that can’t make out with each other ‘cause that’s gross, like. [laughter] You know, or like –

DELAYNE : Oh, god.

ALY : It becomes like – as like an older person I’m like, oh, my god, the children. Like when I watch kid’s movies now I’m like why is that child, like, in danger, where are the adults? This is not how the world should be working.

DARKWICCAN : You go into full –

ALY : So I can -

DARKWICCAN : - you go into full save the children mode, basically.

ALY : I’m like, no, like, you’re twelve years old, you shouldn’t be saving the world, you should be in school.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

ALY : But, so, I was like I’m just gonna skip it and even though I’d had great people respond to me, I feel like I was like no one’s going to read this, like I didn’t have that many hits on AO3, I’m like it doesn’t matter ‘cause no one’s going to read it, I’m just putting it here ‘cause it’s like getting long and I don’t tag things on Tumblr and I wanna be able to find it again. So, that’s why there’s a time jump and I’m really lucky that people continued to read it after like Waverly suddenly appears.

DARKWICCAN : Well, see, I took it as “Oh wow, this author is really relying on people being knowledgeable of the characters” which is something that you can do in fanfiction that you can’t do in original fiction. You can’t just – in original fiction you can’t just have a new character appear and assume that the audience is going to follow along, and know who you’re talking about, and know who they are, and know the character -

ALY : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - archetype, and quirks, and sort of core moralities and things like that. Whereas in fanfiction you can, because you’re taking these characters from an existing property and just taking them and going “plop” into your work.

ALY : Yeah, and I feel like it’s a Wayhaught fic so I was like this is what the people are here for so I don’t think they’ll care literally like how or why Waverly’s suddenly appears. Just like, oh good, like the love interest, like finally we’re getting some interaction between the pairing that I’m here to read.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, y'know –

DELAYNE : Yeah, I mean, I was a little thrown, but it got caught up quick enough, so.

ALY : I’m actually, ‘cause I like have been feeling badly about that for like a while, and when like you contacted me about this I was like, oh, fuck, that’s the one that I’ve been thinking and working on re-writing the first chapter to kind of smooth it, and to have like a little bit of like Nicole and Waverly interacting for the first time, and also maybe like a hijink or something to like even it out and make it read more smoothly. ‘Cause it has like stuck in my head a like I really should have worked more on that when I first like posted it up. So it’s like about halfway re-written right now, in terms of adding just like a couple of scenes.

DELAYNE : Oh wow.

DARKWICCAN : Oh wow, okay. Cool. Well, I’m excited to read that update.

DELAYNE : So I have a question, I think you might have already hinted on what the answer is, but did you have the idea for the unbreakable oath from the start, or was it something that developed during the writing process?

ALY : The first chapter was kind of just like Tumblr stuff that I’d written or already had. All the plot process happened within like chapter two and chapter three, that’s when like actual events happen that’s not just like people interacting with each other. And I actually had decided on it from the beginning, which is very rare, and very surprising based on everything else that I’ve just said.

But I thought it was interesting, and I like the idea of Nicole and Wynonna like having this secret, and the secret being kind of based around Waverly, and having like Nicole agreeing to it before she met Waverly, which I think is interesting and kind of like in her character as like this young, bold person who’s like yeah, of course, why not, why wouldn’t I promise to protect someone that I have never met from my one friend.

And I actually thought of it as like a comedy things, like there’s a joke, I don’t know what chapter it’s in though, as a like a comedy piece and then it became a little more serious because I was like oh, now I have to like introduce it and like do all this stuff with it.

But I did think about it at first, and then kind of smooth out what I wanted it to actually mean during the process.

DARKWICCAN : So I’m assuming that when you say a comedy piece, it had to do with the fact that Waverly could sort of inadvertently order Nicole to do things, and Nicole would automatically do them?

ALY : Yes. And then I was like, oh I’m going to be like hinting at it, but not reveal it, but I’m so bad at like hinting at it, everyone guessed it in the comments, like the first time I was hinting at it they were like “Oh, it’s like an unbreakable oath” or whatever. I was like great, this one thing that like actually – that’s one of the other things I went on the Harry Potter wiki to figure out what it actually was. And there’s not a lot of information on it, which I was like, great, can’t get it wrong, no one knows.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, you gotta watch out for the real hardcore fans because they will know. They will know everything, because not only will they have read the wiki, but they will be going into the deep weeds of Pottermore, and they will be reading between the lines of the original works, and they will find every supplemental piece they can find –

ALY : I know.

DARKWICCAN : - written by J.K. Rowling.

ALY : I was worried someone was going to be like “In a tweet” and I’d be like I don’t read her Twitter, I don’t know. But people like know a lot, and I have a terrible memory. And I also, as I’ve stated, like don’t have a huge drive to like get it right all the time. Which I’ve realized is like not accurate as I’ve met like more writer friends and they’re like “Oh, I do all this research, and make sure everything’s correct” and I’m like, really? You can just write whatever you want.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Well…

DELAYNE : That’s an alternative universe, ta-da!

DARKWICCAN : Well, okay, so I will say yes to a point, but, so if you’re writing in a universe of your own creation, you can absolutely do whatever you want because you’re creating the rules. You still have to follow the rules that you create for it, but you’re creating it so you do have free rein. If you’re writing within the universe of established property, you have to follow the rules of that universe.

ALY : Well I feel like if you’re writing a fanfiction it’s a transformative work, so you’re like re-creating – if you change a rule, as long you keep the rule the same in what you’ve written, like as a reader I’m okay with that too, like I actually think it’s interesting when people say like what if this magic just worked a little bit differently, like this. And it’s like, okay, if that’s your premise, and I’m bought it, then I’m down for whatever you’re doing.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, well that I agree with. Yeah, yeah.

ALY : This is just me trying to explain why it’s okay that I’m going to do whatever I want. Anything.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, no, little things like that, like there’s a new fic on the board right now that has, is based within the Dragon Riders of Pern universe, and immediately the author wrote – broke one of the main rules, which was that bronze dragons can only be ridden by men. Well she said screw that, I’m going to have a fantastic, y'know, bronze dragon being ridden by Nicole, so nynerny nynerny nynerny [ph]. So, but the thing is that’s fine, that y'know that changes, fine, she’s not changing the fundamentals of the universe, she just is changing this one element. So imean, yeah, to a point, you can absolutely play around, but if you start breaking the fundamental rules of the universe then you’re probably gonna run into –

ALY : People will let you know that you’ve broken them.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : They will. They will absolutely let you know, very loudly.

DELAYNE : When you’re just looking for a “Hey, nice job, thanks” no, they’ll call you out when it’s –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. It’s like darn it, all I wanted was a kudos. But, so speaking of things that cause debate within the fandoms, Nicole’s Hogwarts house is one of constant debate within both the _Earp_ and the crossover _Earp/Harry Potter_ fandoms. How did you decide on placing her in Ravenclaw?

ALY : Well, actually, I’ve talking – when I saw that question I was like why did I, so I was trying to remember, and I was talking like with friends about just like sorting meta, which I also just like to talk about in general because I think it’s cool. And I agree, like I was talking to a friend about not using traits as checklists, like checking boxes, ‘cause I feel like it’s limiting, and it’s like maybe a little boring.

Not to say, if someone’s into that, that’s fine, but when I was thinking about what do I think a Ravenclaw is, I think it’s like someone who really wants to understand like the rules, or like the world. So like the people would leave like really long essays on like Harry Potter things, I feel like they’re probably Ravenclaws. [laughter]

But I think that like Nicole in Season One, which is when I was writing this, she realizes something’s happening that doesn’t fit with her understanding of the world, and she’s like well I need to figure it out, like I need to understand what’s going on here, and she like gets, y'know, that like mini-fight that the two of them have outside the Sheriff’s office is more about her going “I’m trying to understand this and no one’s taking me seriously, and people are trying to tell me that the world is one way, and I know that it’s this other way, and I’m going to figure out like, why, or the new rules.” So I think that she’s Ravenclaw in that way.

Although I could kind of see her being like a Gryffindor, maybe, in terms of wanting to charge into danger, and being like, “Oh, I don’t have like the skillset or like the knowledge, but I have the shotgun, so we’re going to figure it out.”

So I don’t have, like, I’m not married to, I’m not really married to placement, I think that if I’m reading something and I like the writing and the author’s like putting in the work to make me understand why it makes sense in this fic, then I’m totally down for like any placement.

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely. Except maybe Slytherin, I don’t think she’d ever –

ALY : Yeah, maybe not.

DARKWICCAN : - really fit Slytherin. I mean, even if I squint really hard, I just can’t picture her in Slytherin.

ALY : Yeah I feel like if a talented person took it on they could make it work.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, you hear that, writers? Challenge thrown down.

ALY : And I bet she has some, like when she takes the letter – well, she doesn’t tell Waverly that thing that happens in Season - Season Two?

DARKWICCAN : Oh.

ALY : Season One? That’s like a little bit of a Slytherin thing of “I’m deciding what’s gonna be good for you right now, instead of communicating with you.” I just think you could take lots of things and use them, it’s like interpreting writing or characters, right, you can kind of read it in so many different ways. Which is really cool, about fic.

DELAYNE : So what I like about a lot fics is when we sort of parallel the canon universe. So you have your seven Death Eaters, and you have a prophecy instead of a curse, but that’s just really neat to me. So I’m wondering, was it easy or difficult to draw on that parallel?

ALY : I think it was both, like it was easy – it’s easier for me to be like, oh, this is how these two things could mesh, like there’s the picture that’s such a huge thing, and with the seven people, and I was like woah, okay, they’re bad guys, who are the bad guys in the Harry Potter universe? They’re Death Eaters, what’s _Harry Potter_ about.

And I kind of remembered from one of the movies like they’re looking for a prophecy in like a basement or something. So I was like, obviously I haven’t seen a movie in a while. But I was like okay, prophecy, great, easy. I could easily even see there, at some point, a prophecy coming up in _Wynonna Earp_ , because I think it happened on _Lost Girl_ , and Emily Andras and stuff.

So I was like, these things actually go together pretty well, and then in terms of like what was actually gonna happen in the story Smurf helped a lot with that, where I was like, “I know I want these things to happen, but I don’t know how to make that happen” and she kind of helped me figure out an outline and a plot progression.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, Smurf is spectacalur at plotting –

ALY : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - storylines.

DELAYNE : Everyone needs a Smurf. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Everybody needs a Smurf, yes, absolutely.

ALY : Actually I think this one, the Harry Potter one, was the first one that she beta’d in Wayhaught. I think she told me that once.

DARKWICCAN : She told me that, yeah, yeah. We were not chatting about you, it’s not like we were having a little conversation like “so, tell me the good dirt”, y'know, it wasn’t like that at all, it was just like, she was sort of listing off her beta experience, and she was like “oh yeah, no, the first thing I beta’d for isawET was ‘lucky dutch’ and I really enjoyed that”, and she just kind of kept listing things.

ALY : Yeah. Anything organizational.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, she is fantastic. She’s going to be so grumbly when she hears this. [laughter]

ALY : I told her – well, I told her some of what I was I gonna say already, where I was like “you’re gonna come up a lot” when I was looking at the questions.

DARKWICCAN : She does, she comes up quite a lot in the podcast, so she’s sort of like the – well she is the – she coined herself the Patron Saint of Wayhaught, right?

ALY : Well, I think she’s like betaing for like half the –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it feels like it -

ALY : fandom right now

DARKWICCAN : - she’s betaing for me, actually, on some things, so, yeah.

ALY : Oh.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : And you know she’s gonna hear this, and message you, DW, and yell at you again. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yeah. She yells at me a lot, it’s fine, it’s fine. At least once a week. Okay, so anyway, anyway. There’s something that got me really, really excited when I was reading this story, and that was the revelation that Waverly is an Animagus. I’m probably mispronouncing that. Sorry, _Harry Potter_ fans.

DELAYNE : That sounds right to me.

DARKWICCAN : Animagus? Uh –

ALY : I clearly can’t answer that.

DELAYNE : I could, I did take Latin.

DARKWICCAN : Y'know, she –

DELAYNE : But it’s been a while.

DARKWICCAN : Okay.

DELAYNE : Sounds right. Animagus.

DARKWICCAN : She’s like Professor McGonagall, only instead of turning into a cat she turns into a wolf. What inspired that awesome choice?

ALY : I don’t remember what I was thinking. I remember like I definitely thought of it pretty early, and I was I just think it would be cool. But I think there was also a lot of stuff happening in the Tumblrs I was seeing of like what if Nicole were like a werewolf, wouldn’t that be cool.

And I was like, what if like Waverly got to have like something, quote unquote, special. ‘Cause I feel like she’s kind of in the shadow, or she feels like, at least, she’s in the shadow of like the heir, and she’s not the heir she’s the baby sister, and stuff like that. And I think like in the story she’s like Wynonna and Nicole get to have their like secret with the oath and the practicing and everything that they’re doing, running around, and all that time that Waverly’s not with them, ‘cause they’re running around being secretive, she’s like “Well, I’m going to have a secret thing”. Like a little bit of a rebel streak.

DARKWICCAN : I like that. Yeah, absolutely, it’s like, “Fine, you guys are running off playing super spies? I’m gonna turn into a dog.”

ALY : Yeah, “I’m gonna turn into a –“

DELAYNE : It was coyot[e].

ALY : Yeah, whatever it is, some kind of canine. Yeah, it’s a coyote, coyote.

DARKWICCAN : You’re giving away what region you’re from, Delayne.

DELAYNE : That’s okay. [laughter] But I am also the one who, y'know, took some wildlife classes, so. There’s a difference between the dogs, but there are, yes, they are canines, but.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yeah.

ALY : Well, coyotes are like, they’re a little bit smaller, and like but I think they’re like faster, and maybe even a little bit meaner.

DELAYNE : But they’re also like –

ALY : And I kinda like that better -

DELAYNE : - cute and sweet -

ALY : - than like the wolf.

DELAYNE : - when they’re not starving, and, y'know.

ALY : I would not – okay. I’ve never met one, so I’ll trust you.

DELAYNE : My wife has a picture of her petting one out in the wild.

ALY : That doesn’t sound like a good idea, That sounds like the opposite of something they should have told you in your class.

DARKWICCAN : Delayne’s wife is a force of nature, in the best possible way. [laughter] But anyway, I love the fact that you made Waverly’s Animagus – again, I apologies, _Harry Potter_ fans, if I’m getting that wrong – made her a coyote, because that is touchstone right back to the sort of Wild West flare that we have from the source material of _Wynonna Earp_.

ALY : Yeah, and it’s – although I don’t if they, they probably have wolves running ‘round. I don’t know, I don’t know anything about nature. [laughter] But I know we have coyotes where I live, and they’re kind of known for being like tricky. Like they’ll make fake dog noises and lure out like domesticated dogs, and eat them. And just the idea of like being a little bit like smarter, in a way, because you have to be smarter because you’re smaller and not like a wolf kind of appealed.

DARKWICCAN : Nice, like kind of crafty.

ALY : Yeah, crafty. And a little bit disadvantaged but you’re intelligence makes up for it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, nice. Well, Aly, thank you for coming on and chatting with us about ‘lucky dutch’ today. This has been an absolute treat.

DELAYNE : Indeed.

ALY : Yes, thank you, it was so fun, thank you for inviting me.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely. But before we let you go, before we let you lose back into the coyote-filled wilderness, [laughter] we have one more question for you. And our listeners all know which question this is, ‘cause it’s a question we ask all of our authors at the end of every interview. You want me to take this one, Delayne, or you want to take it?

DELAYNE : I’m on it.

DARKWICCAN : Okay.

DELAYNE : You are stranded on a desert island, and you can only have one fanfic to read. What is it?

ALY : It’s really hard, even though I kind of knew it was coming, and I was trying to think, and I was like, oh, let me narrow it down, ‘cause I wanna pick a Wayhaught, a Wayhaught one, ‘cause stay on the theme. And Smurf wrote this fic called ‘Let My Demons Lie’, which is off a prompt that I gave her, actually, so it’s like almost a self-plug, or at least a self-brag.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Humble brag, humble brag.

ALY : Humble brag. But it’s about, it starts kind of in like a dark place, but there’s like a dog, and there’s a mystery, and I love like fics that also have like a casefic element, and Smurf is really good at that. So there’s like a mystery, and there’s intrigue, and there’s some humor. And I’m going to take at least twenty-five percent of the credit, for my prompt. [laughter] No. It’s all her, but I really like it and I think it’s still in progress, so people could catch up on it.

DARKWICCAN : So ‘Let My Demons Lie’ by TheGaySmurf, and also known as ‘Sad Puppies’, correct?

ALY : Yes, colloquially. I don’t know, I think Smurf might have made it up, maybe someone else. But ‘Sad Puppies’ because there’s a dog, but everyone’s like really bummed. [laughter]

And like Waverly’s still like kind of possessed at the beginning, so there’s a lot of  great angst, which, let’s be honest, we’re all into. And then there’s also like some humor with the do. Because the prompt was actually a humor prompt that I gave her, and then I think it’s funny that it immediately went to such a sad, kind of angsty place. [laughter] But I’ve been told it’s gonna get better.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome. It gets better, great.

ALY : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Well, we’ll absolutely provide a link to that fic in the shownotes for this episode. In the meantime, however, we promised we would release you, so we shall. Thank you again, so much, for coming on and chatting with us. It has been a lot of fun chatting with you, and also debating with you, that was also quite enjoyable. [laughter]

ALY : Yes, thank you so much, it was super fun.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for joining us. Huge thanks to isawET, aka Aly, for coming on to chat about her fic 'lucky dutch'. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Rail Hoppin' by Ryan Ike; Best Friend by Harry Nilsson, cover by the Tinseltown Singers; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Maddigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast
> 
> We're also on iTunes!


	14. A Little Self-Love Never Hurt Anybody

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week on the podcast DW, Delayne and Laragh turn the spotlight on... themselves! Sharing their own fanfiction works and trying not to embarrass themselves too badly.

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/a-little-self-love-never-hurt-anybody)

 

Read the Fics!

 

[The Peaceful Feeling](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12244581) of My Home by Laragh

 

[Marry Me a Little](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12187371) by DarkWiccan

 

[Now. Here. This.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12651162) by Delayne

 

[Be Here With Me (Series)](https://archiveofourown.org/series/892584) by Darkwiccan & Laragh

 

 

DW's Desert Island Fic: [You Can Tell Everybody This is Your Song (80's Mixtape AU Series)](https://archiveofourown.org/series/819408)

Delayne's Desert Island Fic: [W/T Season Three Ya’ll](http://thekittenboard.net/thekitt/viewtopic.php?t=945) by JustSkipIt. 

Laragh's Desert Island Fic: [Smut Bunnies](http://uberwillowtara.com/smut01.htm) by Artemis

 

Episode Transcript by Flyingfanatic

 

EFA Episode 14 - A Little Self-Love Never Hurt Anybody

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction, I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And also with us this week is the fabulous Laragh!

LARAGH : Hi.

DELAYNE : DW, why do we have Laragh as our special guest today?

DARKWICCAN : Well, allow me to illuminate for you, my friends. We are all here today to do something selfish. We’re going to talk about our own stories. Gasp.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Or nervous giggle, whatever.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. [laughter] Yeah, as we’ve talked about before on the show, or mentioned in passing, each of us, myself, Delayne, and Laragh, are all fanfic authors and we have written for the Wynonna Earp fandom, specifically the Wayhaught ship. And, y'know, we’ve been talking about everybody else’s fics that we love, and we though, you know what, why not a little shameless self-promotion for an episode, y'know, why not?

So, we’re each going to talk about one of our friend’s fics. So, basically, instead of just being like, “Yes, my name is DarkWiccan and my story is blah blah, and I think it’s great because”, what we’re going to do is actually going to introduce each other, instead, and kind of fangirl over each other a little bit, and just see how that goes. So we’ll see.

[laughter] I’m not nervous at all, this is going to be great.

DELAYNE : It is, it is so bizarre to be this nervous. I don’t think I was this nervous when we did our first recording, I mean, I’m beside myself here.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s weird, and I think it’s just because we are talking about our own stuff.

DELAYNE : Right. Except –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : - like you said, thank goodness, I am not gonna talk about my stuff. What I am going to talk about, I’m going to introduce Laragh’s, and I’m going to talk about her multi-chapter fic 'The Peaceful Feeling of My Home'.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome. That is just, I love that story, it’s so sweet, and fluffy, and just domestic Wayhaught at it’s finest.

DELAYNE : So I do like to read people’s summaries ‘cause sometimes, like Laragh, they do a good job in summarizing their own fic. So this “In which Nicole and Waverly decide to add another to the family, now that the terrifying forces of evil in Purgatory […] and Peacemaker has been retired.”

DARKWICCAN : So yes, so right off the bat we know that this is a post series, speculative, fluff fiction.

DELAYNE : And her –

LARAGH : Yes.

DELAYNE : - Laragh makes some good notes about what she deals with, or how she deals with the potential or what could be coming up in Season 3, and sort of – I love how you dismiss, but don’t like – I mean, it’s not dismissed, but it’s –

LARAGH : It’s pretty much dismissed.

DELAYNE : [laughter] It’s intentionally vague. But the most important thing everyone needs to know about Laragh, is that if you have not read anything else by her, this fic is so very much her.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

LARAGH : Maybe that goes, like, everything that I write, basically.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. You’re probably one of the best baby fic, domestic writers, like, in anywhere, honestly. Both in this fandom and back in the –

LARAGH : You can’t complement me like that, you know I can’t handle it.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Well, just put on your big girl pants.

DELAYNE : Okay, well, then close your ears, ‘cause this is my note. Laragh is one of the best writers of domestic fluff I have ever known, and she adds just enough angst or, y'know, outside forces, to make the story interesting, but still maintaining that general kind of day-in-the-life feeling, and fluff, and domesticity that it ultimately is.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I heartily concur with that, heartily concur with that assessment. Laragh is hugely talented at capturing the day-in-the-life element, the mudanity of living but still making it very sweet, and special, and unique.  And it’s like a warm blankie that you just kind of curl up in.

DELAYNE : A bonus blankie!

DARKWICCAN : It is a bonus blankie! [laughter] Aha, yeah! [laughter]

DELAYNE : But, y'know, start to finish this fic, like you said, it’s a baby fic so it starts where we confirm that Waverly is pregnant, and ends when Waverly does have the baby, including one of my favorite little flashbacks about Nicole and her thermos, about how they conceived the baby.

LARAGH : That was all DW, that was DW gave me that idea, that was all her.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yes, sorry, I have to, yeah, I did, we were, yeah, spitballing idea back and forth and I was like “ooh, ooh, ooh, wouldn’t it be funny” and so, yeah.

DELAYNE : Soup? She’s eating it, she needs to cut back on the caffeine, or man, that’s a lot of soup. [laughter] Okay, well thank you, DW, once again you proved the importance of having a beta, or someone to talk about fics with. Oh, my gosh. So I’m gonna jump ahead, though, so when Waverly finally reveals that she is pregnant, that is one of the most hilarious scenes ever, because of Jeremy. [ “You track my period?!” [laughter] “How else am I supposed to know to stock the fridge with chocolate?”

DARKWICCAN : Should be always. Always, Jeremy. Always stock the fridge with chocolate.

DELAYNE : Oh, my gosh, how was – Laragh, your brain is just brilliant, that is –

LARAGH : Honestly I was really worried about that, because I thought that it would come across as Jeremy being like too creepy, and I didn’t want that to be the case. So it was kind of like a balance, but I think it worked. In the end it was okay.

DARKWICCAN : I think the fact that he was innocent about it, like how is this a bad thing, like he really, genuinely felt like he was being helpful, ‘cause he was trying to anticipate his team’s, y'know, needs, and he was using technology ‘cause that’s what he does. So because he comes across as so innocent about it, and it’s not coming from a place of true, like, y'know, weirdness, that’s what made it okay, and what made it like really, really, funny. And the reactions from everybody really, really on point, and hilarious.

DELAYNE : That actually, I have a question for Laragh. Jeremy’s comedy set, then, when we come back around to Jeremy being funny, I’m curious, what inspired that, I guess?

LARAGH : Most of it was like just kind of just trying to get characters into particular places at particular times. I needed Jeremy to be in the city so that Nicole could go home alone, so that the whole thing could happen with the birth, so it kind of was just born out of necessity, but I liked it then, it worked.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

LARAGH : I wanted Jeremy to have a happy ending. Y'know, I wanted him to have a boyfriend of –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

LARAGH : - some description, and I also wanted it to be open so that if he gets a boyfriend in the show, it could still be him just working in a different, I specifically didn’t name him or anything.

DELAYNE : Nice.

LARAGH : So, yeah, that was kind of the origin of that.

DARKWICCAN : So the origin of having Jeremy want to try stand-up comedy was just “Well I need to get him into the city somehow”?

LARAGH : Pretty much.

DARKWICCAN : “So I’m going to have him do an open-mike”. That’s awesome.

DELAYNE : Another shout out, you reference your very first one-shot fic, just briefly –

LARAGH : I do, I shameless self-promote my fic, within my fic. Yes.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : So everyone needs to go read ‘Welcome To My House’ as well. It’s not nesecary to read –

LARAGH : No.

DELAYNE : - it before you read this one, but it’s just a great fic, and it is the reason that at least I started reading Wayhaught fanfiction.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yeah, that’s trure, I remember that. I was – I remember messaging you going “Laragh posted a fic for Wayhaught!” and you were like “Okay, I’m in”.

DELAYNE : And then it very quickly became “I’m all in”, so, y'know.

LARAGH : So, in a way, I am responsible for this podcast ever being born.

DELAYNE : Yes! [laughter]

LARAGH : I take that credit, I will take that credit.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yeah, alright, absolutely. We’ll just get you a little badge that says “Podcast Instigator”.

LARAGH : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : So that was 'Peaceful Feeling of My Home' by the fabulous, and inimitable, and charming, and talented Laragh.

LARAGH : Now we can stop talking about me, and start talking about DW, who is the –

DARKWICCAN : Oh god.

LARAGH : Who is the, just, writes the most amazing fanfiction. I just, I’ve loved her ever since our _Buffy_ days, which was probably like a decade ago at this point.

DELAYNE : Oh, let’s not talk about how long ago that was, my birthday’s coming up.

LARAGH : It was a long time ago, we’ve all been in the _Buffy_ fandom for a long time.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

LARAGH : Like I said before, DW was the one who brought me into _Wynonna Earp_ and Wayhaught, so I was super excited when she started posting fiction as well, for them. And the particular fic we’re going to talk about today is called 'Marry Me A Little', and it is just, oh, my god. I need to take a breath, because it is just the funniest one-shot for Wayhaught I think, I’m confident to say, you’ll ever read. It is the funniest one-shot ever. It has my favorite fanfiction line of all time. My favorite fanfiction line. The pacing is sublime, you just like, ugh, it’s – I can’t even, I’m so excited.

DELAYNE : My note says, “The best proposal fic ever.”

LARAGH : Yes. Well, Delayne’s is good as well. [laughter] But, yeah, it’s just it’s so quotable, there’s so many good lines. It’s written in Waverly’s vernacular, which is I think is awesome ‘cause you don’t even see fics from Waverly’s point of view most of the time, it’s kind of mostly Nicole -

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

LARAGH : - that you see in fandom. So not only is it kind of from Waverly’s point of view, but it’s also in Waverly’s vernacular, it’s written how she would speak, how she thinks. And it’s just so much fun.

DELAYNE : “Attacked her with her face”. [laughter]

LARAGH : Yes. Which is what we all still use as a line when we’re talking about…

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I have to admit I have a lot of fun writing ‘Marry Me A Little’. I was listening to a lot of Broadway soundtracks at the time that I wrote this story, I was getting Laragh hooked on Sondheim, as best as I could, so I put together a comprehensive music, y'know, Broadway musicals that you must know playlist for Spotify and shared it to Laragh.

And in the process, of course, that meant that I was listening to fabulous music, and so ‘Marry Me A Little’, the title comes from Stephen Sondheim’s musical ‘Company’, with the song Marry Me A Little in it, which was actually originally not in the original Broadway production. It was written for the original Broadway production and cut, and subsequently returned in revival productions, which has nothing to do with fanfiction, but [laughter] I was listening to this song, and if you listen to this song, it’s this really sweet song about how this character, y'know, is ready to be married, but not ready to be married. Like, they want to get married, but they have all these terms. Like, y'know, let’s get married, y'know, marry me just little bit, y'know, let’s make things easy, we’re never gonna fight, we’re never gonna, y'know, have troubles.

So the idea that came up for me when I was listening to this song, before I started writing the story, was that Waverly thinks she wants to be engaged to Nicole, like, right away. And so she sort of goes through these conniptions of thinking that Nicole’s about to propose to her, because she is so, so, so ready for this to happen, but I mean, in reality, maybe they’re truly not ready, but again, this is all from Waverly’s point of view, so you don’t get the reality check, you just get Waverly’s sort of frantic, kind of, “okay, come on, let’s go”. [laughter] “Any second now, this is the day, today is the day, today is the day that she’s gonna ask me” and so I just had a lot of fun setting up all these scenarios where she’s building herself up, and building herself up, and then, oop, it’s not the day. And then she has to sort of deal with the emotional, immediate emotional aftermath of “okay, so it wasn’t today”.

DELAYNE : “Waverly’s decided that her intuition is balls.”

LARAGH : That is my – that is the line, that is my favorite comedic fanfiction line of all time. And it might not sound funny as you’re like hearing it here, but when you read it, with the pacing and everything else, it’s so funny. Sometimes I’m like walking down the street and I start laughing. [laughter] It’s so funny.

DELAYNE : I definitely have gotten many weird looks while reading fanfic, but especially both of yours. Luckily I’m not usually reading in a public place too often, but still.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, unlike me, who’s reading on the train, and constantly get weird looks form all the –

LARAGH : I’m reading at work.

DARKWICCAN : But I’m so glad that you liked this story, it’s really, honestly, this is my favorite Wayhaught that I’ve written.

LARAGH : I re-read it this morning, just to be fresh for today, and I noticed, speaking of music as well, that you have Nicole hate on country pop.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, she hates on country pop, yeah, and that is a, as you know, I hate country pop music, and so I was like I see all of this fictions where Nicole is listening to country music, and not necessarily like making a big deal about her being a fan of it or something, but just all of these fictions where she’s to country music, and I was like “no we’re not going to make it my headcanon that she hates it, because I hate it, so mleh”. [laughter] But that does give Waverly the opportunity to put on her fabulous lesbian song mix.

LARAGH : Yeah, you use one of my favorite Tegan and Sara songs as well, in this fic, so I was like, “Yas”.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. [laughter] Yeah, just a nice little inside joke to the good old women loving women community there.

LARAGH : Also, and something I notice as well, and I don’t know if you did this intentionally or not, but there’s a couple of references where you use _Buffy_ -speak.

DARKWICCAN : Are there?

LARAGH : Yeah, one of them was like, oh, “tonight was perfect for questions of the forever variety”.

DARKWICCAN : Oh really, you felt that was like _Buffy_ -speak?

LARAGH : And then another – yeah, ‘cause you use another where it was like “Nicole was being avoidy-weird, but not the bad kind of avoidy”. That’s like Willow-speak, that’s _Buffy_ -speak.

DARKWICCAN : Okay. [laughter] I can, okay, I can see that, but I think that the language of most genre television today has been influenced by that style of dialogue that was made popular by _Buffy_.

DELAYNE : I’m going to side with you, DW, that I didn’t really pick up in any – it didn’t seem extra _Buffy_ -speak, to me, any more that what I normally use in my regular speaking, now.

DARKWICCAN :[laughter] But, so, I guess, yeah, if you clocked it as _Buffy_ , I’d say that’s fair, but also it was not like, I wasn’t thinking “I’m totally gonna get some Willow dialogue in here”. Because I was – I’m so thrilled that you commented on the pacing, because pacing this story was incredibly important to me, how I paced it and how it read, I wanted it read very, very frantically, and very, y'know, fast. Like, because I imagine that Waverly’s mind is very fast, very fast-moving, because she’s so intelligent, and she’s so, y'know, she’s just so smart, and she has had to spend so much of her life kind of in her head because, for any number of reasons, she couldn’t voice her intelligence, y'know, so I just figure that her head, that her mind thinking process is very rapid. So I wanted it to read rapidly, so I’m grateful that it sounds like I told it off. [sic]

DELAYNE : I, yes, I agree completely, and the pacing was fantastic, and that you definitely, definitely pulled it off.

DARKWICCAN : Yay.

LARAGH : And you have that really beautiful, little quote as well, where Waverly is thinking about how much she loves Nicole’s tallness, about like wrapping her arms around her, and then that moment where Waverly gets to be tall because Nicole picks her up? That floors me every time. Every time I read that, I’m just like “ugh, that is just the most beautiful”. I think it’s most, the most non-sexual intimate paragraph I’ve read anyone write about them. Honest.

DELAYNE : It’s a sweet as “comparing you to potatoes”.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, oh yeah, from the ‘One-Eighty’ by sensitive_pigeon.

DELAYNE : Sometimes I’m funny.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s weird, ‘cause this story I’m really super-duper proud of it, and it’s always kind of weird to be, I don’t know, for me, it’s weird to be proud of my own writing, like it’s weird to be like “Yes, I wrote that, and it’s fricking amazing”. [laughter]

LARAGH : It is amazing, it’s really fantastic.

DARKWICCAN : Well, thank you, Laragh, thank you so much.

DELAYNE : Agree, wholeheartedly.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, well let’s get the focus off me, please. [laughter] Alright, so now we come to the third story that we’re discussing here today, and, as you may have guessed since Delayne introduced Laragh, and Laragh introduced me, I will be introducing Delayne’s story, 'Now. Here. This.'. And so the thing about this story is that it is a – it’s told from Nicole’s point of view, and it’s a speculative backstory piece, but it doesn’t bring into play what we do know of Nicole from the show, so it’s not a canon backstory, it truly is an original backstory. And it is, it starts off with some person, we don’t know who, saying, “Everything in your life has led you to this moment.”

DELAYNE : [laughter] Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : I’m paraphrasing a little bit there, but that’s how it – so, it’s somebody saying this. We don’t know who’s saying it, the speaker is not identified, and then we just sort of dip into Nicole’s mind, and sort of follow her back to when she was in college, and we find out that she, y'know, was in college when she first came out, things didn’t go well with her family, she ended up sort of in a homelessness type situation, but fortunately she was also dating a girl at the time, and it sort of focuses on – well not sort of, it does focus on this relationship that she had with this woman in college, and how that relationship felt like it was going to be forever, and then it wasn’t.

And we find out why it wasn’t, and it’s very sad, and so we go through this sort of emotional journey with Nicole, and we end up, at the end of the story, where it’s revealed that the person who was speaking at the beginning of the story was a Justice of the Peace, or some sort of officiant leading Waverly and Nicole through their wedding vows. So, that sort of beautifully, beautifully bookended, beautifully bookended there, were from “Everything in your life has led you to this moment” to the vows.

And it’s just really, it’s lovely, and it’s introspective, and it’s sad, and sweet, and just a – I honestly, at the time, when Delayne asked me to beta read it for her before she posted it, I said then “I honestly think that this is best thing you’ve ever written”.

DELAYNE : [laughter] And that, ugh, gosh.

DARKWICCAN : You’ve written since then, and again you just continue to just blow my mind with, y'know, how your writing is evolving, and –

DELAYNE : Right, ‘cause you’ve seen my earlier work, which is hidden away on the Kittenboard.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : But it is just, it’s really lovely. And the way that you write is very – it reminds me a lot of kind of, it’s very Walt Whitman-ish, in that it’s very, only the right words. Everything is pared down to its most simple, clear, and evocative.

LARAGH : That’s a great comparison, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, kind of phrasing. You don’t go off into lengthy descriptions, you don’t sort of go into sweeping poetic whatever, because it’s not necessary, it’s more like just here’s what you need to know to understand this person.

DELAYNE : And actually there was some notes that I had made that didn’t, I mean, when it wrote itself, that’s usually how I write, I don’t write I’m just a vector in which things come through, so as it wrote itself some of the notes on a little bit more backstory had disappeared, it just didn’t make it in because, must be as you said, it wasn’t necessary.

DARKWICCAN : Exactly, yeah, yeah. You basically, you conveyed everything that you needed to in wonderful economy of words.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Which I find hilarious, because otherwise in my everyday life I over explain, and talk way too much, so this [laughter] this was definitely a piece for me that was a) very different from what I have written, and a very different style, and it just sort of, it came out because the stuff I have been working on is either fluff, or smut, or fluffy smut, I mean that’s generally what I keep to. And there was a lot going on in the world, and it was just, I needed to write something with feeling, and this is just what came out.

DARKWICCAN : And you succeeded, friend, it is very emotional. Re-reading it in the anticipation of today’s recording I was, y'know, it’s a very, it’s not a long piece, it’s relatively short piece, but it’s so impactful, and I remember coming out on the other side of it, y'know, just this morning reading it going “oooh, ow, oh my chest just squeezed a bit. [laughter] Oh, let me get a drink of water, it’s so, I’m not going to cry”.

But it is, yeah, it’s just a really, really lovely little work, and very imaginative, too. Y'know, again, you chose not to rely on canon information, so we were making this stuff, y'know, you made up this backstory pretty much entirely.

DELAYNE : Ah, and see you say that, but I am actually not, I don’t consider myself very creative, I take a lot from my personal life or other instances, and it does so happen that in college I had heard about a girl who’s girlfriend had, y'know, something happened, and essentially she was kept out of her own apartment because, essentially, it wasn’t hers. And that was, I heard about it from a friend, of a friend, of a friend, or something. So, I mean, to whoever’s story that I just told in my own way, thank you for letting me borrow it, and I certainly hope I did it justice, but, in a way, it wasn’t even my story, so it’s like [laughter].

But it’s something that I’ve always wanted to tell, it’s something that’s always been at the back of my mind like if I could write this into a story, someday I will, and as all of us are Kittens, you know why I couldn’t tell it –

DARKWICCAN : Right.

DELAYNE : - as a Willow and Tara story, because there would only be one way to tell it, and we’re not allowed to do that.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Yeah, that’s a – the Different Colored Pens forum has a lot of rules, a lot.

LARAGH : Which I am duty bound to enforce.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yes, dear moderator, yes. Well, I mean, I wrote a Willow/Tara story that I ran past you going “there’s no way in heck that I’m posting this without a thumbs up”, and I didn’t get one, I didn’t get a thumbs up. So I posted it on AO3 instead, nobody’s read it, but [laughter] at least I published it somewhere.

LARAGH : Yeah, no, we have to, I mean we’re not talk too much about the Kittenboard, but it’s supposed to be their safe place, so we make rules that enforce it to be a safe place.

DELAYNE : And I’m glad -

DARKWICCAN : And that makes total sense.

DELAYNE : - but I’m glad that I wasn’t able to use it for them, because I think it fit this so much better. It was waiting for Wayhaught.

LARAGH : Yeah, I think definitely, for me as well, I feel a lot more freedom within Wayhaught to write, I don’t feel like as emotionally entangled with them. Not that I don’t love them, I do, I adore them, but, yeah, definitely more freedom to explore whatever route I want, reading or writing. I’m rambling, guys, help me here.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : We getcha, we getcha.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] We complete agree, yeah, absolutely, I feel a lot more freedom to write within Wayhaught than I did with writing for Willow and Tara. And it’s funny, because I did actually try writing for other women loving women pairings, out, y'know, out that exist in the world. I tried writing for Xena, I tried writing for y'know crack ships that didn’t actually exist, and those, just, I couldn’t really get beyond a page because there wasn’t enough for me to be invested on one hand, and, or on the other hand it just, even though I might have really supported the ship, like y'know Xena and Gabrielle, I just wasn’t comfortable writing in that world that created. I’m much more comfortable writing in a contemporary setting.

But because of the rules that are understandably in place, y'know, at Different Colored Pens, there are storylines that I wanted to explore that I just couldn’t do it. And also, y'know, in some instances, wouldn’t have worked for them.

But now that we’ve got Wayhaught and they’re contemporary ship, they’re ongoing, current, they appear to be safe, thank to Emily Andras, there’s a safety net there, there’s a comfort. It’s like, okay, I know that I can play with these characters and my heart’s not gonna be broken, even I decide to break their hearts in my story, at least I know that in the world of their home base, y'know, on the show, they’re fine.

LARAGH : Yep.

DARKWICCAN : So I think there’s that element. And also with Willow and Tara there’s a lot of the “let me fix what they screwed up”.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Y'know?

DELAYNE : And that’s the thing, we don’t have to fix things with Wayhaught.

DARKWICCAN : Right! Which is amazing.

DELAYNE : I mean, there’s certainly a lot of fics about processing what’s happening on the show, which might be a good lead in.

DARKWICCAN : But yeah, no, Delayne, that is an excellent lead-in.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Speaking of processing.

DARKWICCAN : Speaking of processing, yes.

DELAYNE : You know what’s a great series?

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : What would that be, Delayne?

[laughter]

DELAYNE : 'Be Here With Me (Series)', where we have so much lesbian processing, oh, my gosh.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] But before we get to that, before we get to that, which we’ll get to in our second segment today, yes, we are continuing the motif of shameless self-promo for the second segment. So instead of bringing on an author to chat with and be interview, Delayne is going to interview myself and Laragh about our series 'Be Here With Me'.

[CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Inkwell Isle One (Piano) by Kristoffer Madigan

 _Purgatory Weekly_ is a one-of-a-kind digital magazine chronicling events within the fictional township of Purgatory, as well as providing articles and advice columns relevant to 'real life' events within the _Wynonna Earp_ Fandom.

Lovingly curated and with fine attention to detail, _Purgatory Weekly_ is your best bet for staying on top of the latest happenings in everyone's favorite Ghost River Triangle watering hole.

You can follow them on Twitter at PurgatoryWeekly to get a new edition every week.

 _Purgatory Weekly_ : if it happens in Purgatory, you can read about it here.

ADVERTISMENT ENDS

MUSIC : The Airship by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And welcome back everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my co-host –

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And for this segment we are turning the mike completely over to Delayne to be our lead interviewer, and Laragh and I are going to attempt to behave ourselves. [laughter] As we discussed in segment one, this is our shameless self-promotion episode, and so we talked about our fics, kind of our solo works, for the first section, and for this segment Delayne’ll be talking to Laragh and I about our collaborative series. So, Delayne, the floor is yours.

DELAYNE : Alright, so this collaborative series, called 'Be Here With Me', we have currently ten parts, one of them is multi-chapter, and I’m curious what inspired you to write this vignettes?

DARKWICCAN : Well, I cornered Laragh in a dark alley, and –

DELAYNE : [laughter] That’s a funny picture. Sorry.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter] And told her, in no uncertain terms, that she and I were going to collaborate on something, at some point.

LARAGH : Actually, that happened.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter] And I believe I said something like “I’m not gonna dictate what it is, I just want something to sort of come up organically”. Because collaborations where you have one person sort of forcing the story on the other person, they tend to not work out to well, so I wanted this to be a true fifty-fifty collaboration. And I didn’t know, at the time, what that was gonna look like. I genuinely had no idea.

LARAGH : Right, I think that conversation was like a good two months before we ever wrote any. So we really just kind of put the idea out there that we would do something, if it came up.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

LARAGH : And then it did.

DELAYNE : Okay. I guess, in terms of that organic coming about nature, if you wanna describe how you do it, I think that says a lot about this organic process.

DARKWICCAN : Sure. So, well, first of all, I think that what sort of influenced how we write these stories is how we came up with the first concept for a vignette, which was she and I were just chatting, over messenger, like we do, and we were talking about Wynonna Earp, and specifically Wayhaught’s relationship, like we do, and we started to, yeah, we started talking about Waverly’s perception of Nicole’s past relationships, and started sort of discussing how we though Waverly might feel. Would she feel intimidated by the fact that Nicole has been out for a long time and probably has multiple partners, has had multiple partners, and how does that affect her, y'know, now, her thought process and feeling now. And so I just kind of went to Laragh and was like, “do you think this would make good vignette?”

LARAGH : Yeah, and I was like, “yeah, sure, let’s try it”, y'know.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and I said, “well why don’t we try this like, let’s do a theatrical improve technique” –

LARAGH : Yep.

DARKWICCAN : - ‘cause my background is in theatre, as I’ve said many times, and I’m sure people are tired of hearing about it. But my background is in theatre, and I, y'know, I was in the _Second City_ , which is a improv comedy group, got a lot of folks who end up on _Saturday Night Live_ come up through. And so I basically took a –

LARAGH : I didn’t know that, I would have been far more intimidated if I knew that.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Right? I am completely blown – I knew you were in New York, and you did stuff, but _Second City_? C’mon man, I feel like you’ve been –

DARKWICCAN : Well, actually, actually, I didn’t do the _Second City_ in Chicago, which is their home base, I did the _Second City_ , they had a theatre in Las Vegas for a while, so I was part of that.

DELAYNE : Oh.

DARKWICCAN : - so, yeah, I can’t say that I was _Second City_ Chicago, no, no, no, no, no. [laughter] But, so, I’ve got a pretty heavy improve background, so I said to Laragh, “let’s try this improve technique where basically we are writing in character in the chat forum, or in messenger, and all we’ll do is we’ll just establish a setting, we’ll establish a subject, and then we’ll just go. And in addition to the dialogue that we write, we’ll also write description”. Like you would with any normal, y'know, fiction writing. Because it’s important that your character knows what the other character is doing with their body, because their body communicates so much beyond just their words. And especially because in chat, you are, when you’re, y'know, reading a missive from whomever you’re chatting with you’re reading it in your own head voice. So you’re putting your own inflections on it, you’re putting your own interpretation on it.

DELAYNE : Which can lead to a lot of misunderstandings. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, exactly. So it was really important that with our dialogue that we’re communicating, we’re also communicating descriptive imagery of what our characters are doing in that moment, physically. So that was kind of it, it was like, “okay, let’s give this a try, let’s see how it works” and neither of us knew if it was going to work. I’ve never seen this approach to collaborative writing ever, in my life, so this was really brand new territory for both of us, and so we just dove into this first story, ‘Girlfriends, Actually’, and it turned out really, really well.

LARAGH : Which is a _Buffy_ reference, by the way.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

LARAGH : Just a throw back to our origins, again, that was a _Buffy_ reference.

DARKWICCAN : That was a purposeful Buffy reference, because it, yeah. That was a nod to both Laragh and I’s, y'know, kind of Buffy background.

DELAYNE : And we may have a little more references in future parts of this series. But I guess that answers one of my questions, was the first one, ‘Girlfriends, Actually’, the actual first one –

LARAGH : Yes.

DELAYNE : - that you wrote together –

LARAGH : Yes.

DELAYNE : - was the first one you published?

LARAGH : All of them have been published in the order they were written.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : Oh. Have there been any bits you have not published?

LARAGH : No.

DARKWICCAN : No.

DELAYNE : Oh.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, we went through, we built up a healthy backlog before we started posting, and we have gone through our entire backlog, and so we’re taking a break, and we’re gonna start writing again probably at the end of April, or so.

LARAGH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : I guess this is an important question that people might like to know: how did you decided to write, who was writing Waverly, and who was writing Nicole?

DARKWICCAN : Oh, that was really easy.

[laughter]

LARAGH : Yeah, that really wasn’t difficult at all, we just literally, we just talked about, and DW asked me who did I normally think of in my head when I was writing my own stuff. And I said I usually think about Waverly, I usually kind of thing from Waverly’s POV. And DW said the same, she said she also thought of Waverly. And then, yeah, we just discussed it, and DW, I think you said, “I think I’d like to take on Nicole for this” and I was happy to take on Waverly.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I did, I had just come off of writing ‘Marry Me A Little’ and so I was very much in Waverly’s headspace, and I wanted to get out of her head a bit, and so yeah, this was the perfect opportunity to do that.

DELAYNE : But did you think it was gonna be challenging to write Nicole?

DARKWICCAN : Honestly? No, I didn’t. Because I think that Laragh, as Waverly, has the tougher job, because a lot of times it’s actually Waverly who is driving Nicole’s reactions. So, and I think that’s true in our writing, and I think it’s also true, to a point, on the show as well. Where Nicole is really just reacting to Waverly and trying to meet Waverly on her level. So really, it’s great, Laragh tees up with Waverly, and I just [popping noise] knock it, y'know, as Nicole, and it’s just really nice back and forth that we’ve developed.

DELAYNE : Nice shout out to the softball metaphor, there.

DARKWICCAN : Thank you.

DELAYNE : Set it up, knocking it out. [laughter]

LARAGH : Totally intentional.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah absolutely, yeah. Planned that well in advance. Weeks ago, in fact.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : I believe in the comments, yes, there’s been quite a few “man, you guys are hitting it out of the park”, and I think myself has been one of those that have commented as well. The style of writing, it’s very, very different from writing a regular story so, I guess, what are the challenges, what are the differences – each of you, I want each of you to answer this – what is the most challenging part for you?

LARAGH : Oh, boy, the most challenging part. I mean, the most challenging part is, this is hard, because it’s actually surprising.

DELAYNE : Coming up in the spot?

DARKWICCAN : Well, no.

LARAGH : It’s, y'know, for me it’s far easier than writing by myself because, y'know, you’re conscious that someone else is on the other side waiting for you, live. So you don’t really have the opportunity to be indulgent about your writer’s block, you kind of just have to respond.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : Oh.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely, you don’t, you know that somebody is waiting for you to come back with a response, so not only can you, you can’t sit there and go “well, gosh darn it, I don’t know what I’m going to say” ‘cause you just gotta say something.

On top of which, your descriptions have to be very, just, concise, because you can’t sit there and wax lyrical, y'know, about, I don’t know, the way that Nicole’s holding a jelly donut, I can’t sit there and just be like, go off for paragraphs, you know, it’s really gotta be short and to the point, but clear so that Laragh has a very clear picture of what Nicole is doing in that moment, in addition to what she’s saying.

So I think that, for me that’s a bit of a challenge, I don’t tend to be a very lengthy writer of prose, I usually am pretty concise, but at the same time there are times when I’m like, “oh, man, I really have to convey exactly what is happening visually here” but at the same time, y'know, I don’t have the luxury of going on, and on, and on, and on, and on. I’m trying to clarify it.

So, for me, I think self-editing in process is probably a challenge. Also, Laragh, I don’t know if you’d agree, I would say that sometimes the biggest challenge is finding that ending.

LARAGH : Yes. Very much – yeah. Actually, that’s exactly what the biggest challenge is, just figuring out an ending that seems natural, and that sounds good. DW normally has to go on and finish, maybe put it like a last line in or something, if we can’t come to one organically.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, sometimes we’ll just kind of – and again, this is just part of improvisation, you don’t always have an easy ending in improv, sometimes it’s just somebody going “okay, that’s enough”. [laughter] But we don’t have that luxury here, we do actually have to be able to come to a concuionn, and yeah, once in a while we’ll kind of just keep going, and going, and going, and sort of we’ll both, I think both of us will trying to shape toward the ending –

LARAGH : Yes. And the Nicole and Waverly will just like jump into something new.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and then they’ll go off in that other direction, yes. So once in while we’ll kind of get to a point where we’re just tired, we’re just exhausted, and we don’t have anything more we can say. So sometimes we’ll stick a pin in it and say “okay, well clearly this isn’t don, we need to come back, y'know, in a couple days and finish it”. Or sometimes they’ll be just close enough to an ending that I can really write, quickly write what’s called button, and put a button on the ending, and be like “okay, that’s good”, y'know.

DELAYNE : Doing it this way, was there, how did you decide on endings at the point? Like, what was your plan going forward when you first decided, “okay, we’re gonna do it this theatrical improve way”?

LARAGH : Endings are never, ever decided on.

DELAYNE : Oh.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, we never, ever discuss the endings in advance, ever.

DELAYNE : I bet when you planned it, I guess how you decided it was… let’s refer to the first one, when you first decided to do it this way, was there any – you said there was absolutely no mention of how it was gonna end, or you were just gonna go until you went, or…?

LARAGH : We just went, yeah. There was no discussion of ending. There was just the topic, which was –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

LARAGH : - talking, Nicole and Waverly talking about Nicole’s past. That was it, that was all we went on, and –

DELAYNE : Aha, and then you just went until…?

LARAGH : Until it felt right, yep.

DELAYNE : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter] And that was, I did have to write a little button on that one, ‘cause we did sort of get to a point where, if we don’t stop it now, it’s gonna get weird.

[laughter]

LARAGH : Yeah, right. That was probably the only thing about endings we ever discuss, and that was the material would never go above a, um…

DARKWICCAN : T.

LARAGH : T, thank you.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : I did notice that in the comments, and I, that is perfectly acceptable, and I think it’s necessary, actually, not just acceptable, it’s necessary. Because not all fics have to be smut fics, let’s leave that to the professionals, which –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : - definitely professionals in your own, in some of your own writing, but, um.

DARKWICCAN : Well, like, something we did have one or two people going, y'know, “hey, why did you stop there, why didn’t you continue this on to the inevitable” and we just came back with, “listen, we’re friends, we are friends”, y'know, there is – it’s one thing if we were actors on stage, improvising with each other, that’s a completely different situation, like I have been in improvisational scenes that have ended in a kiss, with a dude, which is weird, but it’s the direction the scene went in, I was playing a straight character in that scene. So that’s just the direction that it went, and y'know, I was comfortable with this actor, and so I knew that I was safe with him, he was safe with me, and it’s the direction the scene went, and that was fine.

But this is completely different, we are on different continents, we’re, y'know, Laragh is in Ireland, I am here in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, so we’re on separate continents and there’s that element of intimacy that happens in writing in general, but then you have the added element of we’re writing in a chat room, you’re writing in a messenger app, and there’s that line that you don’t want to cross. Because that takes it to a world that is not okay for us, so, you know.

DELAYNE : Well, even outside of this unique situation, y'know, I’ve written a few fics that like, my original intention might have been to get that scene, and I found myself, after writing it, like it just, it was better to fade to black anyway, so. But it’s especially good in this situation since, man there’s a lot of conversations. I mean it’s –

LARAGH : Yup.

DELAYNE : - this is dialogue, that is the point of this, and –

LARAGH : If you don’t you don’t like processing, it’s not gonna be for you.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, this is definitely about the words, and not about the physical.

DELAYNE : Yeah, and that’s, I think that’s what I love about this, and that’s what a lot of other people seem to love about this, is we’re getting this, a) we’re getting the lesbian processing, and b) we’re getting stuff that we don’t get in canon, because they don’t have time for that. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : They don’t, they’ve got way too many other things to deal with.

LARAGH : Revenants getting in the way of the processing.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : Have you guys considering having someone show up?

LARAGH : We’ve never actually talked about. It becomes infinitely harder when you introduce a third person, I think.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, it does. Yeah, we had, one of our last stories, actually our last two vignettes that we wrote, one of them took place in a diner in the city, and they had to deal with not only a waitress, but also a mother with their child, and so I just kind of went, “well, I guess I’m writing that character”. So poor Laragh is sitting behind her computer waiting for like twenty minutes while I write a dialogue back and forth between Nicole and this third character, just so I can get rid of them. [laughter] Get it back to just being Nicole and Waverly having a conversation.

And then in one of our last ones they’re at a little carhop, drive up, y'know, sort of hamburger joint, and they have a carhop come up to the window. And once again, I was like, “well, I guess I’ll just write this person real quick” and so write this third person dialoguing with Nicole real quick, and then it was back to just Waverly and Nicole, so.

DELAYNE : And Laragh, how did that make you feel?

LARAGH : This is becoming like a therapy session. [laughter] Yeah, I just, I trust DW to keep the story on point, that’s kind of where, like with everything, she just kind of keeps things going, and does all the technical work, and I just kind of show up, and do what I have to do.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : I definitely identify with you here. [laughter] Hi, DW, thank you for doing everything, I just show up.

DARKWICCAN : Well, you’re welcome, it’s my pleasure, no problem.

DELAYNE : I did get to try this with you, DW, I’d like to tell people that, and by golly is it difficult. It is not an easy task for someone who is not as quick of wit on their feet.

DARKWICCAN : Well, I think that, honestly, I thought that our little exercise, ‘cause I think was trying to help you –

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - get unblocked, you were dealing with writer’s block at the time. And I said, “well, why don’t we just do this as an exercise, just to sort of get your mind moving”, and so we wrote for about, what? Twenty minutes? And –

DELAYNE : [laughter] As my wife stared at me and went, “What are you freaking out about?”

DARKWICCAN : And, yeah, I think that the most difficult part of the process is really just having the honest conversation, but having this honest conversation in character. So you’re in someone else’s head, but you’re speaking honestly, and that’s not easy, and it does take that sort of level of comfort, and familiarity, and trust in your scene partner that you can go there.

One thing I love, that Laragh does to me all the time, is she will come outta left field with something that is completely, truly, totally honest for Waverly to say, or do, or be in that moment, but I will be totally unprepared as Nicole, and I’ll just be like… “okay, [hand clap] we’re doing – okay, let’s react to this, how are we gonna handle this”, and so that’s what was talking about earlier, how like Waverly, Laragh as Waverly, like sets things up, and Nicole just sort of reacts to them. So, really, Laragh makes my job easy.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Well, Laragh, what is your experience then, knowing that you surprise not only DW, but certainly the readers, quite a few times?

LARAGH : It’s really not intentional, I just, I do what feels right in the moment, I just, I guess I get into her headspace and I just do what I feel she’s feeling.

DELAYNE : Have you ever been surprised by yourself?

LARAGH : I mean, I’m certainly, certainly there’s things that have, like, I’ve written them and then I’ve read it, I’m like, “oh, my god, she just said that, or she just did that, or whatever”. But never to the point where I’ve, y'know, felt like I’ve written her into a corner or anything, I feel like we’ve always been able to make it flow. Whatever happens, it felt like it was always truthful. I never felt like we forced anything onto them –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

LARAGH : - any emotions onto them, it’s always felt real.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely, I completely agree. Even when you’ve caught me off guard, it’s always felt true, it’s never felt fabricated, or forced. It’s like when you’re having a true conversation with somebody, and they just say something that you’re not prepared for, but you can’t imagine them not having said it, y'know, afterwards, it’s like, “oh, yeah, that makes total sense that they would react to what I said with that, because they’re thinking completely differently about this than I’m thinking about it”.

DELAYNE : Anyone with a spouse can definitely relate to –

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : - many of these.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yeah, there are definitely, y'know, I’m married, and my wife and I on the same page ninety-five percent of the time, but then there’s that five percent where we just are like, “what are you – where the hell, like, what is wrong with you?” [laughter] So, it’s just part of that relationship dynamic.

DELAYNE : Right, so my next question is, you having a spouse, how do you keep your personal life, and your personal situations away from influencing these conversations?

DARKWICCAN : Um, you don’t. I mean, for the most part my personal life doesn’t come into play, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not pulling from true history, y'know, I’ve not brought anything that is active within my relationship with my wife and I into my storytelling in any of my writing, whether it was a solo piece or one of the collaborative vignettes with Laragh, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not pulling other things that aren’t affecting of my relationship.

Like, for example, talking about in ‘Girlfriends, Actually’, when Nicole basically says that she had a boyfriend in high school, but not really, ‘cause he was her beard, and she was his, that’s true. In high school I did have a fake boyfriend who was also very gay, so we were each other’s beards. So, I was like, oh, that’s a fun little biographical element that I can, that I feel fit with Nicole’s story.

DELAYNE : And I think what fit with a lot, I’m guessing quite a few readers probably identify with that as well.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and also, the thing about, we dedicated an entire story to Nicole looking to buy a new car. And that was because I was looking to buy a new car. [laughter] So it just, you what, actually –

DELAYNE : Yeah, so there, you do draw from personal life, and personal experience.

LARAGH : I think there’s definitely –

DELAYNE : Sounds like.

LARAGH : Yeah, I’m not married, so I don’t bring anything from that front, but I know the episode – not the episode – the one we did on casual discrimination, that was born from a conversation that we had separate to Waverly and Nicole, and just about our own experiences with casual discrimination. But there’s definitely aspects like that that we draw on to relate to the characters.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that was, I think, one of our best, that one.

LARAGH : Mhm. And that was the one I was most nervous about. That was the only one right afterwards, where I went to DW and I was like, “I’m not sure that one went well, I don’t know if that one went okay”, and she had to like talk me down a little bit, and be like, “no, it’s okay, it’s, it works”, and she like explained to me why it worked. Like a toddler.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : No! Well, okay, what it is was in that particular story, was that prior to the beginning of the scene, Waverly and Nicole were at dinner with friends of Nicole’s from the police academy, and we decided in advance what had been said at the table, and much as is true to life, Waverly reacted to what was said at the table differently to how Nicole reacted to it. Waverly interpreted it differently to how Nicole interpreted the situation, and that is what lead to the discussion slash mild argument in the car ride home. Y'know, in that Nicole was like, “it wasn’t that big of a deal” and Waverly’s like, “Excuse me? Yes it was a big deal, thank you”. [laughter]

So, Laragh, correct me if I’m wrong, I think afterwards you were like, “I think we need to change what –“

LARAGH : Yeah. Sorry, yeah, I thought we needed to change what the background, what was said before the story ever started, because I felt like Waverly was reacting a bit too aggressively for what was said, and then I realized, ‘cause I was kind of seeing it as well from, even though I was Waverly, I was seeing it kind of from Nicole’s point of view, and then DW kind of said, “Well, Waverly has interpreted it to mean something intensely, quite y'know homophobic, and Nicole had interpreted it as kind of a joke. And once I really got it, that Waverly saw this as this, as, y'know, what had happened, it became just infinitely clearer to me.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and we never say, in the story, what was said, because we want our readers to kind of infer, or come up with their own determination -

DELAYNE : ‘Cause they probably –

DARKWICCAN : - of what could have been said.

DELAYNE : - have their own personal experience about casual discrimination to draw from, so.

LARAGH : Exactly.

DELAYNE : Yes, that was a very well done piece. And relevant.

DARKWICCAN : Thank you.

[laughter]

LARAGH : That’s really kind.

DARKWICCAN : Well, hey, Laragh, can I ask, can I ask you a question? What about writing Waverly has surprised you the most, or what have you learned about her, in writing her?

LARAGH : Ooh, that’s interesting. What have I learned about writing Waverly? I think that I’ve learned just quite how deeply she feels. Y'know, things mean a lot to her, and I think we get glimpses of that, like in the episode of ‘Bury Me With Your Guns On’, before they kiss, when they have the unicorn conversation when she goes off and is obviously, kind of, deeply troubled. But I think she feels like that, for me, when I play her, she feels like that about a lot of things. She just, y'know, even something small she feels deeply, and intensely, and I think that translates into her love for Nicole as well.

DELAYNE : Hey, DW, what did you learn about writing Nicole?

DARKWICCAN : I learned that she gets angry. Yeah, that’s the thing that I think really surprised me, is that, y'know, we’ve seen her get frustrated, we’ve seen her get pissed, but we haven’t really seen her get angry. And in writing Nicole I’ve tried to keep her relatively even-keel in how she reacts to Waverly. When Waverly gets a little volatile, Nicole typically shifts into a sort of moderate position where she’s like, “okay, I’m going to be calm so that the situation calms”. And I think that also comes from being a cop, as well, and trying to mediate things to a place where they’re no longer volatile, and problematic.

So there’s a vignette where Nicole gets angry because she’s basically just exhausted, she’s tired of being the middle ground, she’s tired of being, quote unquote, fair, because she kind of getting the fuzzy end of the lollypop every time, and so she just, she snaps, she finally snaps. She calms down immediately afterwards, but it was really interesting for me to realize in that moment, in writing Nicole, that it’s okay for her to get mad, it’s okay for her to not be –

LARAGH : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - even-keel, it’s okay for her to have that emotion, and let it out. And so that was something that I learned that I didn’t anticipate.

DELAYNE : I think that’s an important lesson for everyone. In the issues that I’ve had in my relationships, as in outside me and my spouse, is that people are allowed to have feelings, it’s okay.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and it’s not that Nicole’s unfeeling, it’s just that she’s always kind of mitigated herself, and again, in an effort to sort of keep things calm. And so I think it was just allowing her to let that guard down in that moment, and be – because in being angry, she also was very vulnerable, she allowed herself to be very vulnerable in that moment, as well.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So, yeah, that was cool. That was cool to learn.

LARAGH : Y'know, I think when people call Nicole controlling I always like to say that she’s controlled, but she’s not controlling. She controls herself.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

LARAGH : That doesn’t mean that she’s a controlling person, and I think that’s an important distinction.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I agree, and the whole thing in Season Two, where they kept coming back around to this whole notion of Nicole trying to control Waverly just never sat right with me, because especially if you go through and you like cut together all of the scenes, and all the dialogue, it’s like at what point is Nicole actually trying to control Waverly, like, she never once puts her in a position where she’s trying to control her, y'know. Even the situation with the DNA y'know paperwork, that was coming of a position of protection, and not control, so, yeah.

DELAYNE : And you portray that very well when you write for her, so.

LARAGH : Can I ask you guys a question?

DARKWICCAN : Okay.

LARAGH : Okay. I’m turning the tables on you. You’re stranded on a desert island, and you only have one fanfic to read. What is it?

DELAYNE : Oh, I was not prepared for this. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, I’ll answer so that you scramble for a second there, Delayne. So, if I was stranded on a desert island, and I only have one fanfic that I can read, I’m gonna have to go with ‘you can tell everybody [that] this is your song’, the 80s Mixtape AU by piratekane and beta’d by TheGaySmurf. Because, two reasons: one, it’s long, [laughter] so it’ll keep me company for quite some time; but also it’s just such a beautiful, and wonderfully written, and beautifully executed story that is so vivid, visually, that I would basically have my own mental movie theatre on the island as I was reading these stories.

DELAYNE : Oh, man. [laughter] I was so not prepared. I’m looking through my bookmarks right now.

DARKWICCAN : Well, so Laragh, while Delayne continues to scramble, what about you? If you were stranded on a desert island, and had only fanfiction to read, what would it be?

LARAGH : I did not anticipate this, okay. [laughter] Okay. Are we sticking in the Wayhaught fandom?

DARKWICCAN : No, you can totally go outside the Wayhaught fandom.

LARAGH : Okay, okay, probably, for sheer joy, because I would think that being stranded on a desert island would probably not be very joyful, [laughter] I would, I think ‘Smut Bunnies’ is probably going to be.

DELAYNE : That is a fantastic answer.

LARAGH : But if I had to stick within the Wayhaught fandom, then ‘One-Eighty’.

DELAYNE : Um, I, yeah, outside, I think, outside of the _Wynonna Earp_ , I would have to go with ‘W/T Season Three Ya’ll’ by JustSkipIt.

DARKWICCAN : If that’s your fic, that’s your fic. You did it!

DELAYNE : That is my pick, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Well, this has been an interesting episode where we all ended up in the hot seat at one point or another. I had a ton of fun, Delayne, thank you so much for taking over the interviewer position for this second segment.

DELAYNE : I did my best, I think.

DARKWICCAN : You did a great job, and Laragh, thank you so much for coming on the show, and being in the hot seat with me, and it is just such a pleasure being your collaborator.

LARAGH : And likewise.

DELAYNE : Yeah, you two do great works.

DARKWICCAN : And so do you, Delayne, so do you.

DELAYNE : Thank you.

DARKWICCAN : That’s enough from us for this week, and next week we’ll be back with authors that are not ourselves, so, thanks for indulging us, everybody, and have a great week.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction._ Thanks for joining us. Thanks to Delayne and Laragh for being willing to get a little selfish this week, and extra thanks to you, our listeners, for indulging us as we chatted about our own works of fanfiction. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Inkwell Isle One (Piano), The Airship, and Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast


	15. Too Cool for School

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week DarkWiccan and Delayne head back to school with their four favorite High School AU fics!!

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/too-cool-for-school)

 

Read the Fics!

 

'[Sick Lullabies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12016596)' by aprilsnowstorms

'[It's Not Hell, It's Purgatory](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7265779)' by FloingMachines

'[Too Young to Be So Scared](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13381737)' by JNS

'[The Things Life Throws at Us](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12383133)' by Bootncatz & theGAYnerd

 

 

 

Fi's 'Desert Island Fic' - [Wishin and Hopin](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12713403) by Bootsncatz 

 

Artwork by Diane Benitez possibly inspired by 'Sick Lullabies': [Skater Haught](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DY_bVNkUQAAWwCD.jpg)

  

Transcript for the Deaf and HOH by FlyingFanatic!

 

EFA Episode 15 - Too Cool for School

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction, I am your host DarkWiccan and with me is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And this week we’re getting all sorts of nostalgic for the nineties. Not because the stories are set in the nineties, but because that’s when Delayne and I were in high school. [laughter] Because this week we are dedicating the episode to our favorite High School AUs.

DELAYNE : I know it’s called “Too cool for school”, but I was definitely “too school for cool”. [laughter] I will put that one out there for here.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Well, y'know, I think that’s true for more folks than not, you know what I mean? Like, yeah there were those, of course, the stereotypical jocks, and preps, and whatnot, but I think most folks I talk to they were like, “No, I wasn’t the popular one, I was a pretty studious person”, and the thing is, is I hear that so often it feels like most people thought they weren’t the popular one, and most people thought they were pretty studious.

DELAYNE : Oh, well, I was popular like Daria. Everyone knew who I was. I don’t remember any of them, but all of them, when they see my mother, ask how I’m doing. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Ah, okay.

DELAYNE : So I was Queen of the Nerds, and everyone knew me, but I was still a nerd.

DARKWICCAN : Were you voted any sort of –

DELAYNE : No.

DARKWICCAN : - hyperbole – no? I was. I was proudly voted Most Eccentric of my senior class.

DARKWICCAN : I’ll buy that, yeah.

DELAYNE : Yeah. That was – I mean, it was one of those things were like the drama kids all, y'know, like that was our torch that we carried every year. At least one of the drama kids, ‘cause, y'know, it was a male and a female, one of the drama kids would get Most Eccentric. So I was very, very proud to have continued to carry that banner my senior year. I was also elected secretary of my senior class, and that was weird because I wasn’t running.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Ah.

DARKWICCAN : So, yeah. The thing is I couldn’t even take part in the student government because I was in theater, and theater clashed with the student government period, so I literally attended three student government meetings, and then I was just like, “I have rehearsal, you guys, I can’t do both of these things” and they never replaced me. So I’m in the senior yearbook with the student body government as the senior class secretary, hanging out like, “Yep, apparently this is my title”.

DELAYNE : Nice.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. I went to a performing arts high school, so I think that also sort of explains a lot of it. But, anyway, so you were in the high school band, though, weren’t you, Delayne?

DELAYNE : Yes, I was a pep band director pretty much all for years, I was the drum major my senior year, and I was also the band librarian.

DARKWICCAN : Kinky.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I had my own room, like I spent my lunch hours in the band room, in my own room.

DARKWICCAN : You had your own office, or was it just like… a room?

DELAYNE : It was a small room with filing cabinets full of –

DARKWICCAN : Okay.

DELAYNE : - sheet music. But there of course was a table, and somehow we acquired some seats from the back of a van, we had some van seats, so it was quite popular hang out spot.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : Well, the music tech had its own room next to my library and that’s, y'know, where all the amps and electronic equipment was stored, so.

DARKWICCAN : Ah.

DELAYNE : But they didn’t hang out in there.

DARKWICCAN : No, no, they hung out in the library with the cool librarian, pep band leader gal. Ah, so anyway, so that’s a little bit about us and our high school days. Shall we dive into the stories that we are here to discuss?

DELAYNE : I believe we should, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Alright, and this week I’m gonna kick things off, so stand aside. [laughter] You get to kick things off a lot, this time it’s my turn.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Have at it.

DARKWICCAN : So, y'know, there’s this common saying that high school is hell, and it’s essentially true. I think, y'know very few of us look back on high school and go “yeah, I want to do that again”. [laughter] There are elements I might not, wouldn’t mind doing again, but none of them have to do with anything involving grades.

So the first story of our show today is my first pick, and it’s called ‘It's Not Hell, It's Purgatory’ by FloingMachines. And this is a typical high school fic. We’ve got Waverly and Nicole as high school students, I believe Wynonna is a year ahead, I believe that in this instance Nicole is a year ahead of Waverly, I think it’s a junior/senior type situation –

DELAYNE : That’s what my notes say, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And in this one Nicole has moved to town, has moved to Purgatory, am I right about that?

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, okay. Like, am I remembering the wrong story?

DELAYNE : I’ll give you a hint: all of them start with Nicole moving to Purgatory.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, good, okay, yeah, alright, good, alright. So, yeah, that’s one thing you run into, y'know, when you’re dealing with a common trope, is there are elements that you’re gonna bump up against each other as being a bit, y'know, repetitive. But as long as each writer is tackling them in their own way, it’s always very fresh.

So the thing that I really liked about this is, first of all, it’s got some problems, and that’s not what I like about it. [laughter] But let me, I will explain why I’m able to get past this issues, and get to why this story kind of grabbed my attention and held onto it. So it’s got, there are quite a few grammatical and usage errors, which normally for me would be like “No!” y'know? “I can’t”.

But it’s clearly written by a teenager, I’m pretty sure a teenager is writing this, and it’s very clear in the language, and the formula of the writing. But that’s what I like about it.

This is an authentic take on what it’s like to be a teenager, and how everything is very high stakes, even the smallest things seem to be high stakes, and misunderstandings happen constantly, and things that really shouldn’t be a big deal are blown out of proportion, and, y'know, everything is really intense. The feelings are strong, and that’s what I really like about it is it is a real, genuine, as I said, authentic representation of high school relationships. Whether it’s a friend relationship, or a romantic relationship, it really captures that level of intensity that truly only exists in your teens.

DELAYNE : Okay, so, that, I’m glad to hear you say that, because as I was reading it, as well, that was my impression, is that the person writing this, was very near high school themselves.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. If not in high school, had just graduated, maybe only a year or two out, yeah. And the writing is good enough that I’m able to forgive the occasional grammar and usage error that pops up. Or maybe a little more than occasional, but, [laughter] again, and what’s nice is as you read, especially once you get up into the double-digit chapters, as you get closer to, y'know, the high teens and nearing the chapters twenty and above, that they’re improving, their writing is improving. It’s getting clearer, they may be working with a beta reader, they may not, but it feels like they’ve got some guidance going on in the background that has really cleaned up their writing, and improved it. Y'know, errors still exist here and there, but the way that they’re describing things, and communicating the information, and conveying feeling has gotten a lot more, what’s the word I’m looking for, it’s gotten a lot more… clear and…

DELAYNE : Concise? No.

DARKWICCAN : Eh, no, not really concise. I mean, yes, but no.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I’m terrible with words, which is funny because I’ve taken Latin and English Word Origins, but, yeah. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : But whatever the word I’m looking for, y'know, it’s just you really see that they’re improving as a writer, and because they were doing a good job of keeping my attention from the beginning anyway, the fact that the writing just improves over time is just a bonus.

DELAYNE : There is one thing that had to sort of suspend disbelief. Is that –

DARKWICCAN : Sure.

DELAYNE : - the tiny town of Purgatory has a Starbucks and a McDonald’s. I just – [laughter] ‘Cause the tiny town I grew up in only just recently has a Starbucks and a McDonald’s.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Well, y'know, why not. And the thing is Starbucks are popping up everywhere now, they’re like acne, they just appear. And, I mean, McDonald’s has been that way for ages, y'know, I mean, I don’t have the same degree of experience of growing up in a small town that you do, I moved around quite a lot, but in the small towns or the townships near where I was living at any time –

DELAYNE : That was like the only thing –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : - that was there –

DARKWICCAN : Was a McDonald’s.

DELAYNE :  - was a McDonald’s.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, like, so I can totally believe that, y'know, Purgatory would have –

DELAYNE : That’s true.

DARKWICCAN : - one McDonald’s, and one –

DELAYNE : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : - very small café, Starbucks.

DELAYNE : You’re right, I’ll concede that, I got stuck into my own, y'know, growing up scenario.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. But, yeah, so this piece is unfinished, and it’s currently at chapter twenty-two. The most recent update was November –

DELAYNE : November.

DARKWICCAN : - of last year, 2017, so it’s been a minute, but it does seem like they tend to space out their chapter postings pretty substantially, ‘cause they’re constantly apologizing about the delay between chapters. But, honestly, I’m up to chapter twenty-two and it’s a relatively quick read, even given the number of chapters, and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything, I don’t feel like I’ve been left in a place where I’m like, “ugh, c’mon”, y'know? They didn’t really leave on a cliffhanger, and so it’s, I think just as it is, up to chapter twenty-two, it definitely needs to be completed, but it’s not like if you – you don’t go into it and end up on the other end with it unfinished going, “Oh, c’mon!” y'know, so.

DELAYNE : [laughter] There is a bit of a, kind of a darker story line, some violence, I don’t know if it’s, I don’t remember looking at the tags…

DARKWICCAN : Champ is an idiot and does a stupid, dangerous thing.

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : That puts Nicole and Waverly in danger. But the interesting thing about it is in this story Champ’s dad is a police officer for the Purgatory Sheriff’s Department, so, and he’s actually kind of in a high level position –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - so Champ –

DELAYNE : Except –

DARKWICCAN :  - screwing up, and –

DELAYNE : Uh, it’s –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : It’s said that “he is Nicole’s father’s boss”, so it makes it sound like, it doesn’t say he’s the Sheriff, but it makes it sound like he’s possibly the Sheriff.

DARKWICCAN : Maybe he’s like the under Sheriff, or something.

DELAYNE : Maybe.

DARKWICCAN : Y'know? Yeah. But that’s something that I also like, the fact that Nicole’s dad is a cop, and perhaps that is something that something that is going to inspire Nicole to pursue law enforcement as well. But, yeah, it’s just, it’s a good story, it does, again, because it’s written by a teenager, or someone who was very recently a teenager, there are some scenarios where you’re just like, “This is, god they’re blowing this out of proportion”, but when you realize that it’s because they’re behaving the way actual teenagers behave, it gives it that element of like, “But I get it”, y'know?

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : But, yeah.

DELAYNE : Yeah, these, I felt a little older reading these High School AUs, like, oh, it’s been so long. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : So, yeah, let’s talk about the one’s that you chose, Delayne.

DELAYNE : Let’s talk about ‘Too Young to Be So Scared’ by JNS.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, that’s a good one.

DELAYNE : And in this one we have Nicole moving to Purgatory, but this Nicole is a very, very different Nicole than we are used to seeing. Definitely different from how she is in canon.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, absolutely.

DELAYNE : So this Nicole has been bullied, and has left her former – her mother has taken her from, I assume, the city – has left the city, taken her out of school, and moved her to this new town because she was bullied, and some other –

DARKWICCAN : Are you trying to tip-toe around –

DELAYNE : Yeah, I was -

DARKWICCAN : - the major –

DELAYNE : - should I just say it? I don’t know.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I think well, this Nicole is an incredibly anxious and very mildly paranoid, and she’s got a lot of psychological trauma.

DELAYNE : Yeah. And so it starts out, Nicole isn’t moved into Waverly’s class until a little bit, maybe a couple of weeks, it’s not specific. So when she starts out the school year she starts in like a lower level English class, and then gets moved to Waverly’s class, and that’s how they meet, is Waverly, being a star pupil, is like, “here, you can look over my notes, I’ll get you caught up”, so. I mean, within the first scene, when they’re going over notes and Waverly’s trying to catch her up, they’re in the library.

This is one of my favorite things, is like, “wait a minute, I recognize that name”, and of course Waverly’s instinct is, “oh well, you’ve heard about my sister”. ‘Cause I have older siblings and there is, when people know about your older siblings they can make a lot assumptions about you. So Waverly assumed Nicole had already heard about the Earp name, about Wynonna, but it turns out Nicole has already checked out quite a few books from the library, and Waverly’s name is already signed out on a lot of them, so.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : Or “W. Earp”.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, mhm.

DELAYNE : So they bond over nerdy stuff.

DARKWICCAN : Which is really sweet, and Nicole, in this story, is very, very sweet, and you do really feel, you can feel her anxiety and her nervous energy really coming off the page. JNS does a very, very good job of capturing that sort of always present baseline anxiety that exists for her, and it does come from the fact that she was bullied at her old school, that’s part of the reason that events occur that led to her mother pulling her out of that school and relocating to entirely different town. One thing that JNS does really well is she captures those moments where it tips over that baseline anxiety and starts to fall into the realm of panic attack.

So, again, like Delayne was saying, the fic that I was talking about, ‘It's Not Hell, It's Purgatory’, the same here with ‘Too Young to Be So Scared’, it’s a bit of a darker sort of storyline. But it’s really, really nice to see how the two girls gravitate towards each other, and really support each other, and help each other, because not only does Waverly help Nicole, Nicole really helps Waverly too.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So it’s not a situation of one person being a burden, or thoroughly dependent on the support of the other person, it’s very much an equal partnership. Which is awesome, considering that in a lot of stories like this it always seems like there’s the one hero character who is there to support and carry through the damaged character, y'know. So it’s really nice here that that’s not case.

DELAYNE : Yes, JNS definitely writes the anxiety very well. And as a person who has anxiety, that did make this a little more difficult for me to read, but I do like how Nicole also starts to work towards a better place, and not just because of – well, also because of Waverly, but she actually goes and gets help, and that’s super important. I can’t imagine if I read fanfic in high school, and if I had these sorts of high school AUs to read when I was in high school, like, it would have just changed everything, y'know?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, you would have been like, “Wait a minute, I’m not alone, I’m not the only one dealing with this stuff?”

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : So that is also a –yeah, it’s in progress.

DELAYNE : Yes. Update was just a couple days ago. Chapter Eleven.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, yeah, and it looks like they’re planning on wrapping it up in thirteen chapters, so they’re two chapters away from competition, so possibly by the time this episode airs, it’ll be complete.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : But do mind the tags, there are some warnings for potential triggers, as Delayne said, if you are a person who does deal with anxiety this might hit a little close to home, but I think maybe for some it could be cathartic, maybe for others it’s a trigger, so –

DELAYNE : Right.

DARKWICCAN : - proceed with caution. Alright. So swing back over to me, my second pick for today is a piece called ‘Sick Lullabies’ by aprilsnowstorms. And once again, we have a scenario where Nicole has moved to town. [laughter] In this situation, they are in the same grade level. What I like about this is one of the tags for this story is “Nicole longboards because she’s gay”. That just really cracked me up. [laughter]

So, Nicole moves to town, and she’s checking out Purgatory High School, and this is the day before she’s due to start, and she’s sort of wondering ‘round the grounds and she sees a weathered and old flier from the previous school year, either for a pep rally, or for try-outs for the basketball team, or cheerleading, or something, and she sees this sort of faded image of the Head Cheerleader, who we know is Waverly Earp, but she doesn’t know that.

And the next day she shows up to the school for her first day and immediately runs into, or rather, is run into by, Wynonna and Doc, who are both seniors in this story. Nicole is a junior, and Waverly’s a junior, and we find out very quickly that Wynonna and Doc are a couple, and they are total stoners.

DELAYNE : [laughter] ‘Cause they’re like making out on her locker –

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : - and she’s like, “Uh, can I get in there?”

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Which leads to a funny little misunderstanding, if I recall correctly.

DELAYNE : Yes.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : But Wynonna immediately takes to Nicole, and even though she’s a senior and won’t have any classes with her, she says, “y'know, let me introduce you to my younger sister Waverly, she’s in your year, and she can show you around, she’s really great like that.” And sure enough, she takes Nicole down to the gymnasium, where the basketball team is practicing, and Nicole has her eye on joining the basketball team, because she was a star player at her former school, and in the process of seeing the sort of bo-hunks in the form of Bobo and Champ, who are star players on the Purgatory team, sort of getting in a fight with each other because they’re stupid, [laughter] she sees Waverly come in to try to break that fight up, and of course immediately it’s like, “actual ray of sunshine, Waverly Earp”. And so one thing I really, really enjoyed about this story, I know I’m always saying “the one thing I enjoyed” but it’s true, there’s always one thing that really stands out for me. So, for this story, it was all of the internal sort of slaps on the wrist that Nicole gives herself about just being too gay to function, y'know? [laughter]

DELAYNE : There’s a lot of gay panic.

DARKWICCAN : There’s a lot of gay panic, yeah, and it’s really, really, it’s very funny. But, y'know, this piece is also unfinished, it is, it hasn’t had an updated since, gosh –

DELAYNE : October.

DARKWICCAN : - October of last year. And so I’m starting to worry that maybe this author isn’t coming back, I’m really hoping I’m wrong about that, but I do have to be honest -

DELAYNE : It just has so much great potential, that I –

DARKWICCAN : It really does. It really, really does. They’re only three chapters in, but in three chapters it’s almost twenty thousand words, to give you an idea of just how much they’re putting into each of these chapters. And it’s so good, it’s so well-written, and again, they’re just getting started, I was, when I put this on the list I really thought that it was the beginning of a steamroll, y'know, I thought that they were really going to be posting really regularly and that at this point we’d be much further along, or even the story would be done. So, y'know, I do say with fair warning, this is an unfinished fic, they are only three chapters in, they’re really just getting going, don’t know if they’re coming back, really hope they are.

There’s not much more I can say except that it’s very likely that whoever requested the fantastic Skater!Haught Wayhaught fan artwork from Diana Benitez, where Waverly is sort of nervously standing on Nicole’s skateboard and balancing by pressing her hands onto Nicole’s shoulders, it’s very possible that this artwork was inspired by this piece, by this fanfic. Not necessarily that Diana Benitez was reading this fanfic and was inspired, but rather a reader of this fanfic commissioned the work from, or requested the work from Diana Benitez. I’m going to post a link to this image because it’s just, it’s perfect.

It’s absolutely perfect and yeah, oh god, man, please come back, please come back aprilsnowstorms, and please, please, please, I know we never put pressure on authors, this is really just me asking as a fan of this piece –

DELAYNE : You’re just sort of putting it out into the universe, ‘cause it’s –

DARKWICCAN : Exactly.

DELAYNE : -not you’re emailing, or –

DARKWICCAN : Right, right.

DELAYNE : - commenting –

DARKWICCAN : Exactly.

DELAYNE : - saying “do it, give it to us now”.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, no, no, nothing like that. I’m just putting the good word out into the universe, and maybe, maybe, she’ll be able to come back and keep the story going. ‘Cause it’s just so good, it’s got such a great start. But that’s enough for me on this one, because there’s not really much more to say.

DELAYNE : Well, I do have a few notes in that this one is a little different from the others in that Nicole’s parents are together in there, ‘cause –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that’s right, that’s right, ‘cause in the others there tends to be a divorce thing going on.

DELAYNE : Yeah, and it’s weird in ‘It's Not Hell, It's Purgatory’ they just talk about her dad, so that’s one not specific as to both of her parents are there, but this one like clearly states her loving parents are like, just decided to up and move, so.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, that’s true, I think this is the only one where we have a double parent household for Nicole. But, yeah, in ‘It's Not Hell, It's Purgatory’, my first pick, it’s definitely a single father situation.

DELAYNE : Okay, I guess I didn’t pick up on that. I was looking for it, and I’m, y'know, generally oblivious of things, so I’m not surprised I missed that. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Okay. So why don’t we move along to your next pick, Delayne?

DELAYNE : [laughter] Alright, my next pick just posted the final chapter like, what was it? Yesterday?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. This is complete. It’s the only complete of the four of our choices today.

DELAYNE : I had to scribble out my notes, I had nineteen out of twenty, I’m like, oh, nope, now it’s twenty out of twenty. It’s called "The Things Life Throws at Us" by BootsnCatz and TheGAYnerd.

DARKWICCAN : [sings] BootsnCatznBootsnCatznBootsnCatznBootsnCatz.

DELAYNE : So this one after Nicole’s parents divorce, partly because Nicole’s father is a dick. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, my god, I want to punch her dad in the face.

DELAYNE : Her family moves to Purgatory her senior year and Nicole was a popular jock at her old school -

DARKWICCAN : Basketball, of course.

DELAYNE : - basketball, of course – and she gets super cocky with her student guide, who was being a nerd, and Nicole brazenly hits on all of the girls in front of this student guide, who, of course, is Waverly. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Mhm.

DELAYNE : I love when it’s revealed that Waverly is in fact a cheerleader and Nicole’s brain just goes “whoop”.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that was pretty fricking sweet.

DELAYNE : But in this one Nicole has siblings and…

DARKWICCAN : So, coming from her old school she had to leave her girlfriend behind, and her girlfriend at her old school was Shae –

DELAYNE : Who was a head cheerleader as well.

DARKWICCAN : - yeah, also the head cheerleader, and so y'know she came from this situation where she was kinda, y'know, the top dog, so now she’s in Purgatory and she is nobody, essentially. So I found it really interesting that she just dove right into flirting with girls.

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : Because for all she, y'know, this could be a true redneck town where people don’t cotton to that, y'know, and so that was quite daring of her to just be like, “I’m gonna hit on anything in two legs and skirt”, y'know? That was pretty –

DELAYNE : This Nicole kinda reminds me of what I’ve heard about my wife in high school. [laughter] And she was out in a town that the graduating class of hers was twelve, so surprisingly no one seemed to care, and I know she had a girlfriend, but it was just like, yeah, so it’s believable to me ‘cause I happen to know someone.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Not, I guess, y'know, I have to think about “this day and age” as opposed to, y'know, living in Alabama in the nineties. [laughter] It’s one of those things where it was known, everybody knew, but I wasn’t like vocally out.

DELAYNE : Right.

DARKWICCAN : You know what I mean. So, everybody knew, and I did have my fair share of fun, but I certainly didn’t have a girlfriend and, y'know, like I mention in a previous episode, I had a fake boyfriend, y'know. So, and again, that wasn’t anyone’s benefit except the true redneck, but anyway, anyway, anyhoo. So what about this story really stood out for you, Delayne, ‘The Things Life Throws At Us’?

DELAYNE : This is one at random. It’s not like the main thing that stood out, but I just feel the need to make a comment about the bumper sticker on the truck, that I believe it’s Wynonna’s truck. It says “Ass, gas, or grass, no one rides for free”.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Nice.

DELAYNE : And it’s –

DARKWICCAN : That’s a very Wynonna bumper sticker, that’s definitely not a Nicole bumper sticker.

DELAYNE : It’s funny because at work someone has that sticker. [laughter] I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it walking through the parking lot. I didn’t even know this sticker still existed, but it’s like a sort of new, updated version. It has little like pictures, even, and I’m like, oh, my god.

DARKWICCAN : So here’s what stood out for me from this story. First of all we’ve got an “enemies to lovers” situation happening with Nicole and Waverly. Also we’ve got a Waverly who is at least internally out to herself. She is, y'know, she knows that she’s interested in girls, she knows that she’s probably at least, y'know, bi, if not fully gay, and so we don’t have that element in the coming of age story of a self-discovery, it’s like, “No, I know who I am”. It’s just more of a, “I know, I’ve come to terms with it”, it’s more of just a “now I have to do something with this information”, and “am I ready to do that”. So I thought that was really interesting, and I also liked getting to know Nicole. Because we get to Nicole kind of as Waverly gets to know Nicole, and, y'know, she goes from this very brash, flirtatious –

DELAYNE : A bit of a stereotype.

DARKWICCAN : She, yeah, she goes from the stereotype to being the Nicole that we know, but it’s a process. And it was really enjoyable to watch that, or read – well, yeah, read about it, but really it feels like watching it happen.

DELAYNE : What stood out to me is actually siblings, so not just Nicole siblings, which is an interesting take, but also how it portrays Wynonna, that is a very unique way to – I mean, it’s not unexpected, but it’s still sort of like surprising, I guess.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, Wynonna’s got a bit of a dark storyline.

DELAYNE : She’s dealing with some shit.

DARKWICCAN : And she’s dealing some shit, so.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Ah, right, literally.

DARKWICCAN : Literally. So, yeah, she is definitely making some bad decisions and it takes the influence of both Nicole and Waverly to – and also Nicole’s sister – to kind of get her back on track. So I thought that was an interesting choice, too, of really having her be a bit of hot mess. But not the hot mess that we know from the show, a hot mess but in a different way, and for different reasons.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So I love this story, so much. It is so good, I’ve actually said on the Twitter feed that this is the contemporary High School AU, and I should, and I am underlining contemporary here because I am not pulling in, I don’t consider the 80s Mixtape AU to be contemporary, because it’s the 80s. So that’s in the past, this is a contemporary story, so I think that this really is the contemporary High School AU to rival the others, for sure. And I would love to pick the brains of –

DELAYNE : Braaaiins. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : - the two authors who came up with it. [laughter] Yes, brains.

DELAYNE : I just – the way you said that, I couldn’t help myself.

DARKWICCAN : So luckily we can do that.

DELAYNE : Yay!

DARKWICCAN : Because yeah, we talked to Bootzcatz and TheGAYnerd, and they have agreed to come on the show for the second segment today and chat with us about this story. So I’m very excited to get to that, but before we can of course we have to introduce our [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Thrash Pack by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : And welcome back everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my co-host:

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we are super excited today to have not just one, but two amazing authors joining us for toddy’s interview segment. The inimitable BootznCatz, and the amazing IamTheGAYnerd, but today will shall call them Boots and Fi. Welcome to the show you two.

BOOTS : Hello, thank you.

FI : Hello. Thank you for having us.

DARKWICCAN : And we are thrilled to have you, thank you for coming on.

BOOTS : Of course.

FI : It’s okay, I kind of badgered Boots into this, so it’s fine.

BOOTS : It’s true. She practically begged me, it’s fine.

DARKWICCAN : Well we appreciate the badgering, absolutely.

FI : I wouldn’t quite say begged.

BOOTS : It was pretty close to it.

FI : Just lots of pleases.

DARKWICCAN : Aw, that’s adorable.

FI : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So, basically, just a general sort of “oh, please, please, please, please, please, don’t make me do this alone” kind of situation?

FI : Don’t make – pretty much, yeah that’s pretty much the exact words. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, nice, okay, great. That psychic’s certificate from Miss Cleo’s school has come in handy. [laughter] So I’m gonna ask you the question that we ask everybody: how did you both get into writing fanfiction? Fi, we’ll start with you.

FI : I actually started with _Andromeda_ fic that I wrote last year, and it was terrible. And then kind of left, because it was just, it was bad. And watched _Wynonna Earp_ , and kind of had an idea in my head that started out on a theory that I’ve got on Waverly’s heritage, actually, and felt, “do you know what? Let’s give it a go” and there you go. It was birthed. That was how it started.

DARKWICCAN : And what was that fic?

FI : ‘Crimson Nights’, which I haven’t finished.

DARKWICCAN : Okay. [laughter] And Bootz, what about you?

BOOTS : Well, it all began when… no, no, I was, I think I started with Lizzie McGuire fanfiction, when I was like eleven.

DELAYNE : Oh, that’s awesome.

BOOTS : It was so embarrassing, I started off reading it, it was like the AOL chatboards, that was like “look at this” and I was “ooo, what is this, this un-new thing that’s happening on the internet AOL kids’ chats”. And I like discovered there was a whole website for it, and it just kinda snowballed from there, really horribly. But it’s great, it’s great.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I would say definitely not horribly, Boots, you’re probably one of the most prolific authors of fanfiction currently –

FI : Can I just say, “Hah! I told you so” at this point, I’m just gonna say that right now. [laughter] This is an argument we have quite frequently.

DARKWICCAN : So today we’re talking specifically about your fic that you’re collaborated on, called ‘The Things Life Throws At Us’, which is a contemporary high school alternative universe story. I have personally called it the contemporary high school universe story that is the standard by which all others should be set.

FI : Thank you.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely. So, and it’s a collaborative work, which is great.

DELAYNE : Yeah, yeah, being that you both have your author’s name on it, what made you two decide to write this together?

FI : It kind of stemmed from a conversation we were having. I think I was watching a film and I went on a bit of a rant about how there was never a girl meets girl fic – not fic, film – and you never get, y'know, the girl meets the girl and they fall in love, it’s always a girl meets guy, and all this sort of thing. So I went on a bit of a tangent about that, which Boots then joined me on, and it kind of burst from there really. I just had an idea in my head of, well, what if we did this with Wayhaught, that would be pretty cool, and I don’t know if you will have seen it, but my idea for Nicole actually came from Nathan, from One Tree Hill? And that sort of dynamic between Nathan and Haley, that’s how it all started in my head which is kind of where it snowballed from, so.

DARKWICCAN : So, Fi, it was your idea to start with, and then you brought Boots on board to come and play?

FI : Well, this was like, I would say both of us, but I kind of came up with I suppose the initial sparking point of “why don’t we write a fic”, like that was like my idea to kind of like join on the fic together. Whereas at developed from a conversation between me and Boots. So I’d say both of us, but I kind of was like, “let’s write it down and show the world”, so.

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha. Very cool. Yeah, one thing I really like about this story that you’ve come up with together is that you have a lot of different tropes at play. Not just the high school AU, but other kind of popular tropey-ness that is coming into play, but you put your own twist on it. My favorite one is that you have Nicole and Waverly start off on the wrong foot with each other, and between the two of you, whose idea was it to tackle this from an Enemies to Lovers angle?

FI : Like I said before, obviously it came – in my head it came from Nathan and Haley, and obviously they didn’t start off on the right foot, but I kind of wanted to add some more angst to it, because me and Boots love the angst. So it was maybe, y'know, they literally hate each other, like can’t stand the sight of each other, and kind of worked from there because we kind of felt it made more of an interesting story. Because obviously – and it’s nothing against any other fics, but obviously a lot of the other fics it’s kind of they meet and there’s this instant attraction and it develops from there, and it’s usually a friendship and things like that. But we wanted to kind of do something a little bit different, and thought, “hmm, let’s make them hate each other”, so.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : It is an effective trope, I definitely enjoyed -

FI : Yeah.

DELAYNE : And Nicole’s, I mentioned in the first part of the show, Nicole’s character reminds me a little bit of what I’ve heard about my wife in high school, so I enjoyed that part. [laughter] Now, now, there’s a character that you have written, and that would be Wynonna. You have made some daring choices, particularly Wynonna being a drug dealer, so I’m curious were you influenced by the series and the comic book canon, was it just a matter of, y'know, extrapolating Wynonna’s not so great decision making, but more to an extreme?

FI : Boots, that’s back to you.

BOOTS : I guess, for me, I think, since we don’t know a whole lot about her background growing up and all that stuff, this could very well be close to canon, something that she would do, just because she does seem like the type that would do something really stupid if she thought her only option, or something that, y'know, would help her get to her goal that she going for, even if it wasn’t the best decision. So I think that, I just, in my head, it just felt like something that like, hey, maybe a younger version of her would do this, y'know. And what would that look like.

FI : And we wanted it to kind of be away, didn’t we, from somewhere. We didn’t want her to have gone travelling, we wanted to like, we were talking about being in a psych ward, or being in prison, sort of thing. So we were like, didn’t know which way we were going, and then Boots came up with this idea, and just kind of rolled with it.

DARKWICCAN : Well, I think it absolutely added a certain degree of depth to Wynonna that we haven’t seen as far as in her backstory. I mean, Wynonna’s clearly a very deep character, we know that from the show, and the series, and she definitely has a lot of, y'know, dark history, so I think that this was a bold and interesting choice for you guys, so yeah, I thought it was really interesting, I liked it a lot.

FI : Thank you.

BOOTS : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So, speaking of the television series, juxtaposed to it, your Waverly has internally self-identified as being queer. So was this element put in place to avoid dealing with the standard coming to terms with your sexuality part of the story, or was there a different reasoning behind the choice?

FI : I know Boots has got her own answer for this as well, but for me it was kind of I’ve read so many times the whole story of Waverly being this “oh I’ve met this girl, I think I like her more than a friend”, and kind of come to terms with it that way. Whereas I thought it would be interesting to see it maybe from the other point of view of “well, I’m bisexual, or gay” however she identified, and her main concern was actually the people around her and what they think. Kind of coming at it from a different angle, that she’d accepted herself, but she was struggling with how other people accept her.

BOOTS : Just for me, personally, the whole like coming out thing, and I’m sure a lot of people can identify, we’ve done it, we’ve been there, we do it all the time, it sucks. It’s not fun, I don’t feel the need to write about it all the time, or the need to re-hash that in myself all the time. It’s obviously a reality for, y'know, a ton of people, but sometimes it’s nice to just have a story where it’s there, and it’s accepted, and it’s okay, for once.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, totally, totally, totally agree with you, absolutely, yeah.

DELAYNE : If I had come to terms a little bit earlier I probably would have been in the same position as Waverly, y'know, so I get it. [laughter] But I want to bring it back to Wynonna, and –

DARKWICCAN : Wynonna was Delayne’s favorite in this story, you guys, if you can’t tell.

[laughter]

FI : She was pretty cool, I did like her too. I have my own favorite, but we’ll get onto her. I have a feeling.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : You have a feeling maybe it’s this question? But having Wynonna enter into a relationship with Nicole’s older sister, was that something you had in mind from the beginning, or did it come out as you were going along?

BOOTS : It – we definitely did not plan it. We planned it where she, y'know, like, the whole like flirting, and fun, flirty friends, whatever –

FI : Domestic Nicole.

BOOTS : - but then, y'know, but then other people started being like, “hey, like, are they going to get together?” like, “blah, blah, blah, blah”, and we were like, “you know what? They’re really cute”.

FI : Yeah.

BOOTS : Because we wrote them super cute, and I hate it, and I hate it because I love it so much. [laughter] And so we were like, “let’s just – are we gonna do it? Yeah, let’s do it”. So we did it. And we forced them to get together. They kinda did it to themselves, really.

FI : Yeah, I was gonna say, it was about that first chapter where you kind of introduced Wynonna into the bedroom, and JC’s sat there, and she’s like, “oh, who’s this?”. ‘Cause that started out a kind of a bit of thing where it’s like, ‘oh, I’m going to mess with Nicole a little bit”, but then the way Boots wrote it there was like definitely some attraction there, kind of a bit more in depth, and I noticed when I obviously read through the chapter before it got posted, and I was just kind of like, “I like this. I don’t know why, but I like this a lot, it’s very cute”. And it kind of went from there. It was so cute, the way you wrote them in that chapter was just, I was like, “Oh, my god, I love them”.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : And I also like how Waverly and Nicole definitely have different views about the relationship. [laughter]

FI : Yeah, they –

BOOTS : Y'know, it’s –

FI : Sorry, you go, Boots.

BOOTS : Oh, no, I was just gonna say, I think it’s the worst thing that has ever happened to Nicole.

[laughter]

FI : Yeah, yeah. She hates it, like, she’s like, “get off my sister, what’s happening?” But I think for her, as well, like because of how we wrote it, she, Nicole’s never had to kind of she JC doing all the dating and things like that, because that’s not how, well, it’s like Boots, because you kind of came up with the idea for JC, and you should tell everybody how you picture her, ‘cause she’s very adorable, and cute, and I want to take her home and look after her forever.

BOOTS : I mean, I don’t know, just in my head she’s like this super nerdy girl, like she wasn’t like unattractive or anything, obviously she’s hot, but, y'know, she in elementary school she like sat on the bench and like read a book, and hung out with the teacher instead of like playing with the other kids. And that’s just kind of how her life, like, her life was always kind of like, “it’ll be better when I’m older, so I don’t have to worry about this stuff now”. So she was just like focused on school, and reading, and like that kind of stuff, and so she was like uber nerd, but like the stereotypical like hot nerd, I guess.

FI : Like take the glasses off, and it all changes. But she was –

BOOTS : Once the glasses are off, she’s a smoke show.

FI : But, yeah. And obviously Nicole’s not used to that, because she’s never seen her dating, things like that, because like JC saw the bigger picture of “well, in my future I’ll have time for all that stuff when I’m older” so. But, I think that’s why she possibly hates it so much.

DARKWICCAN : So, so, in your mind, Boots, was – it sounds like JC was mostly your creation – was, in your mind, was she always tracking toward like being gay or bisexual, or was that just something that came out of the flirtation between her character and Wynonna?

BOOTS : Yeah, I never intended her to be, to skew that way in any way. I mean, if anything, I always intended her to be kind of just like asexual, I’m here for my sister.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm.

BOOTS : I guess the moral of the story is I’m incapable of writing two attractive people talking to each other without them falling in lover. [laughter] I think that’s really what we’re getting at, here.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, my god, oh, man.

BOOTS : You’re hot, you’re hot, get together

DARKWICCAN : Well, well – well speaking of their, about JC and Wynonna’s relationship, were you using their relationship as sort of a foil to Waverly and Nicole’s? What dynamics were you trying, or hoping, to showcase in what makes both relationships either work or not work?

FI : You take this one, Boots.

BOOTS : So, both Wynonna and JC are very self-conscious, in their own ways. Kind of Wynonna in the way that like, “I’m not good enough, I’m a fuck up, blah, blah, blah”, typical her, and then JC in the sense that, y'know, “I’m just a nerd, blah, blah”, y'know, kind of thing, like, “no one likes me”. And so I think that they both internalize those a lot, they don’t talk about them because they just see them as a truth instead of an insecurity, and so they both are thinking these things about each other, like, “oh, well, she doesn’t like me ‘cause I’m not good enough”, and “oh she doesn’t like me ‘cause I’m just an uber nerd” when really, y'know, they’re just self-sabotaging themselves.

And I think that’s the difference between them, and Nicole and Waverly, because with them, they do obviously they have their insecurities, but for the most part they have their – they’re secure enough to talk to each other about these kind of things. Whereas the other two are not, like their whole lives they’ve just kind of been very internal with it, and not talked about it with anyone.

DELAYNE : Definitely self-fulfilling prophecies.

BOOTS : Yeah, exactly.

FI : I mean, in terms of events, they were the ones that were helping Waverly and Nicole like sort their shit out, sort of thing, but can’t seem to see it with themselves.

BOOTS : Like they’re great with other people.

FI : Yeah, can’t see it with themselves, so, it’s kind of… I can’t think how to word this.

DELAYNE : That seems appropriate and true to life.

FI : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that’s one thing about the Wynonna and JC relationship, it seems very, very real, and very authentic, y'know, they’re having genuine issues that would absolutely come up when you have these two different personality types in a relationship together, and like you say, not communicating. I think you set up JC and Wynonna to be a post child type situation for what not to do when you’re in a relationship. Don’t clam up, don’t keep things to yourself, you actually need to air things out, and talk them out.

FI : Yeah, definitely. I think everyone’s done that at some point, I know I have, so.

DELAYNE : Well, I would not know what that is like at all, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.

[laughter]

FI : No. It sounds like it.

DELAYNE : So another thing that’s interesting to me is when we have Shae in a fic, y'know, ‘cause on the show Emily made it clear that it was important that Nicole’s ex was not, y'know, some caricature, and y'know, she’s a real person, not a bad person, but trying to do the right thing. So it’s interesting in your story how you made Shae superficial and manipulating, so I’m curious, the process behind that.

FI : Do you want me to take this one?

BOOTS : Yeah, you can start.

FI : Okay.

BOOTS : If I have anything to add.

FI : Basically that was kind of me, sort of my fault. [laughter] Don’t hate me!

I kind of had this idea of, when we were talking about the story and where we wanted to go with it, I had this idea of kind of having something that would possibly tempt Nicole to want to go back to the life she was living in L.A. before she moved to Purgatory, and something that would kind of hold significance for her to want to do that, after she’s like met Waverly, and is starting to fall for her, and things like that. And obviously Shae would be the kind of prime example of this, ‘cause obviously she was with her for a long time, and loved her in some weird way, and it was just, we knew we wanted to bring Shae back, and I just wanted her represent this old Nicole.

So she was then in a position where she was torn between her new life in Purgatory, and her old life in L.A. And I kind of wanted, in my head I wanted her to make a conscious decision of, “okay, who am I going to choose”, maybe without realizing it until later on, but I wanted to kind of go, “wow, my new life in Purgatory with Waverly is kind of where I’m going”. And I wanted to have like a bit of an internal struggle because we kind of have points in our life where we have that, where it’s like, well, it would be easier and comfier to kind of stay where I am, rather than do the daring and put a foot in future and the unknown.

So I just wanted to bring that to them and unfortunately Shae was who I decided to use as part of that.

BOOTS : Yeah, I guess, I mean, I would like to preface this by saying in all my other fics I’m very careful with Shae, and any other potential love interests that come into Nicole’s life, as far as not making them a villain. Because I don’t like the whole like, pit girls against girls for girls, kind of thing. But in this, I mean, look at the beginning, look at Nicole in the beginning, she’s kind of an asshole too. I think it’s just a matter of people are really different in high school than they are in real life. And I think that -

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and plus being from L.A., y'know.

[laughter]

BOOTS : Yeah, exactly, I say, I’m from L.A.

FI : L.A. people, impossible.

DARKWICCAN : I’m from Burbank, so, yeah.

[laughter]

BOOTS : I’m in West Hollywood, I’m right there. Anyway. So, yeah, it’s just a lot of, I think that, y'know, maybe the Shae in canon could have been a bitch, back in the day. It’s possible. So, we’ll just go with that.

FI : Don’t know if I’m allowed to say this, Boots, but she might make an appearance again, and it doesn’t necessarily mean she’s gonna be a bitch in the future…

DELAYNE : We have a hint of what’s to come.

DARKWICCAN : Is there a sequel happening? ‘Cause I thought you guys wrapped this story up?

FI : We did but we have –

BOOTS : Well, there’s the sequel, where Nicole gets back with Shae.

[laughter]

FI : Yeah, she dumps Waverly and leaves.

DARKWICCAN : Don’t joke like that, you’re gonna have people jumping on you -

FI : I know.

DARKWICCAN : - claws out, man.

BOOTS : It’s twenty years in future, they have three kids together.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : You really wanting that mail to come in, those messages coming at you.

DARKWICCAN : No, I think Boots is flexing her Emily Andras troll muscles.

[laughter]

FI : And she has good ones, trust me.

BOOTS : When you learn from the best.

DARKWICCAN : So, can I ask how your collaboration works, is it that you take turns writing chapters, are you hashing out the outline for each section together, how do you approach your collaboration?

FI : Boots, you can go, ‘cause you came up with the idea of how we were gonna do this, ‘cause I was all very new to it.

BOOTS : Well, we started out with yeah, an outline, we basically just hashed out the outline for entire thing before we started, y'know. The end was a little vaguer, like we had basic points we wanted to get to, and where we wanted to end, but as far as like the big stuff in middle, it kind of formed later. So yeah, we just wrote the huge outline together, and then we go back and forth, and switch between writing the chapters, and then, you know, we’ll bounce ideas off each other, like, “bleh, I don’t get this, help me”, and then we’ll, “eh, do this”, y'know, typical –

FI : Well, a lot of the time I’ll be like, “I’m stuck with this, and in my own head, help me get out what I need to get out –“

BOOTS : Yeah.

FI : - so we kind of just talk and it’d kind of come from there. And I don’t know how this worked, how it started, but me and Boots both kind of, when we were writing a chapter, we just kind of go with the flow, and an idea would come out and be like, “oh, well, I’ve put this in, I hope that’s okay” and then, obviously, because we beta each other chapters before it got posted and everything. So a lot of things in there kind of just went with the flow of the chapter, as well, like we had the main points of where we wanted to go, but anything in between –

BOOTS : Yeah.

FI : - we were both just kind of like, yeah, just go with where your mind takes you sort of thing.

DELAYNE : Was there any elements that took either of you by surprise, from the previous chapter posting?

BOOTS : I feel like there has to be at least one thing.

FI : Yeah.

BOOTS : That we were like “whoops, sorry about this”.

[laughter]

FI : Yeah, that did kind of happen.

BOOTS : There you go.

FI : The thing for me, like, that I did to you I think, was with Nicole’s dad.

BOOTS : Yeah.

FI : I was like, “oh, I’ve just thrown him in there ‘cause I needed something to happened, we hadn’t in our outline, I was like, “I need some sort of catalyst” and I was like “I know who it can”. ‘Cause we hadn’t really visited him -

DARKWICCAN : Right.

FI : - much, we kind of introduced him and then kind of left it there, so I supposed that was some sort of closure for Nicole as well, maybe.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, Nicole’s dad. What a bastard. What a –

FI : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - grade A -

FI : Yeah. He was an asshole.

DARKWICCAN : - like, yeah, you guys didn’t really have a villain for the piece, for the most part, it was just sort of day-to-day living, and growing together in relationships, and things like that. Growing together, growing apart, going through the school year. So there wasn’t really a true villain, but if you were to have had a villain, I think Nicole’s dad really would have qualified.

FI : Yeah, he took the number one spot, for sure.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, absolutely.

[laughter]

BOOTS : He’s kinda the worst.

FI : Yeah.

DELAYNE : He officially gets the title of “The Worst”.

FI : He does, yeah, definitely. And I’m going to blame Boots on this, ‘cause like, we like to create angst, and she created a monster in me, ‘cause I was like, “I don’t know, maybe we should be nice, and make it pretty”, and she was like, “No! Torture them! Give the all the emotions!”

[laughter]

BOOTS : I wouldn’t say that those are the specific words.

[laughter]

FI : “Give them all the emotions” maybe not, the torture one was maybe me.

[laughter]

BOOTS : I think that was – yeah, that was reading the subtext in my words, I think.

FI : Yeah. Making my own words.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, well, this has been an adventurous, adventurous interview, this had been a ton of fun, getting you guys sat down and to chat with you about this terrific, terrific, terrific, terrific, amazing, contemporary high school fic, ‘The Things Life Throws At Us’. Guys, if you can’t tell, I’m a huge fan.

[laughter]

FI : I hadn’t noticed, no.

DARKWICCAN : No, not really? I’ve been trying to be cool about it, y'know, trying to kind of keep it on the DL. [laughter] But it’s all, it’s yeah, I get super excited chatting with authors who like, it’s one of my favorites, so.

[laughter]

FI : Thank you.

DELAYNE : You’re literally bouncing up and down right now.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : But anyway, anyway, anyway, we’ve kept you long enough, I think. You know, at least one of you has a golf tournament to get to, or something, so.

[laughter]

BOOTS : I mean, it’s Dinah Shore, it’s close enough.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Exactly.

BOOTS : Same difference.

DELAYNE : It’s supposed to be a golf tournament.

DARKWICCAN : It’s supposed – yes.

BOOTS : Is that what’s happening? Is that a thing that actually happens?

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : It used to be.

BOOTS : I’m sure there’s golf tournaments somewhere.

DARKWICCAN : But at any rate, so, but before we let you go to go golf, or not golf, I have one final question. And this question is just for Fi, it’s just for Fi, because Boots, you get to hold off on answering this for a while. But I hope you’re ready, Fi, I hope you did your research, ‘cause I think you know what’s coming if you listen to the show. And it’s our final question, the question that we ask all of our authors at the end. And that is: you’re stranded on a desert island, and can have only one fanfic to read. What is it?

FI : Ah! Well, it’s actually ah… what, no, I’m gonna do it. It’s actually ‘Wishin’ and Hopin’’ by BootznCatz.

[laughter]

BOOTS : Ugh.

FI : And she’s sighing, I can feel the looks of disapproval. [laughter] And I did run this past her, because she was like, “Oh, no, ‘cause I’m not that great”, but I dunno I just like, I love it so much, I can’t even, ‘cause the different kind of perspective from Nicole, and I’m sorry Boots, I’m sorry. It’s just kind of like her internal struggle, like it tackles stuff about mental health, the big details like she goes into with it, it’s like I’m watching a film right in front of me, and it’s, ugh. People are probably gonna be like “what, how can you do this” but in a way it kind of runs parallel with the 80s AU for me as well. But I think it just clinches it, because there’s just something, I don’t know what it is, but there’s just something about this story that just dragged me in, and obviously I get to beta it as well, so maybe that might have a little bit to do with it. But it’s just such a good story, and it’s had me gripped from literally the first day when Mal was kind of like “oh, I’ve got this idea, so let’s go for it, and see how it goes”. And I was like, “yep, right, fine, I’ll read a chapter”, and I just instantly fell in love with it, so.

DARKWICCAN : I can completely agree with you.

FI : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : I can absolutely completely agree with you, and tell you that is an excellent choice. ‘Wishin’ and Hopin’’ has held my absolute attention from the first line.

FI : Definitely. And there’s just something in every chapter, its… ugh. I can’t, I can’t put it into words.

BOOTS : I know we were saying that Nicole’s dad is The Worst, but I think Fi is The Worst right now, so.

[laughter]

FI : Thank you, love you too. [laughter] It’s fine, you can yell at me later, so.

BOOTS : That’s true.

DARKWICCAN : Well, as always we will be providing a link to ‘Wishin’ and Hopin’’ in our show notes as your selected desert island fic, so thank you for sharing that with us. Okay, well thank you both so much for coming on the show, it has been fantastic chatting with you. Boots, have a fantastic time at Dinah Shore, Fi, have a fantastic time -

FI : Having an evening with my cat.

DARKWICCAN : - with your cat. And can’t wait to see what comes next!

FI : Thank you, thank you very much –

BOOTS : Thanks, guys.

FI : -  thanks for having us. It has been fun. And I’ve fangirled just a little bit, just a tiny little bit. I kept it cool.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for joining us. Huge thanks to Bootsncatz and Fi (aka, theGAYnerd) for coming on in our second segment to discuss their story 'The Things Life Throws at Us'. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro and to MJ for this week's [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM].

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story and Thrash Pack by Darren Korb; Song of Feathers (Emily's Theme) by Erik Barone; and Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast


	16. WHU - WayHaught University

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DarkWiccan and Delayne have graduated high school and are on their way to the ivy-covered walls of University! Join them as they discuss their four favorite College/University AU fics! Then they sit down with author Bootsncatz and have a groovy chat!

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/whu-wayhaught-university)

 

Read the Fics!

 

"[Let's Get Married](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11486988)" by Thisusernameistakenagain

"[I'll spread my wings (and I'll learn how to fly)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11935827)" by maidenstar.

"[Whatever You'll Give Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12685833)" by Woody7066

"[Wishin' and Hopin'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12713403)" by Bootsncatz

 

 

 

Bootsncatz's 'Desert Island' Fic: ‘[Selling Acid Was a Bad Idea](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11394618)’, by brogurt

 

Episode transcript for the Deaf and HOH by FlyingFanatic!

 

EFA Episode 16 - WHU WayHaught University

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction, I am your host DarkWiccan and with me is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And this week, after spending all last week’s episode in high school, we have matriculated, with honors, on to university. Our focus for this episode is entirely fanfictions that have been set in a college or university setting.

DELAYNE : Hey, DW?

DARKWICCAN : Hey, what’s up?

DELAYNE : Did you go to college?

DARKWICCAN : Yes, and no.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Well, I went to college, and, wow, there’s some memories.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, you went, you had quite the college experience.

DELAYNE : I spent five years in my undergrad and one year in my post-grad.

DARKWICCAN : So did you end up graduating with a Masters in something?

DELAYNE : Well, I did, I have a non-thesis Masters in Biodiversity and Taxonomy of Plants.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, this is botanist!Delayne.

DELAYNE : This is botanist!Delayne, but, yeah, college was great, and I definitely enjoyed reading fics about college, because was that was definitely an important time in my life, and coincidently also when I started getting into fanfiction, so.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I had the opportunity to go to college but I didn’t go because I couldn’t afford it, and I didn’t want to get stuck in a loan that I would spend the rest of my life re-paying, and I didn’t get a scholarship because on paper it looked like my parents had enough money to send me to college, so. One of those pesky catch-22 scenarios.

DELAYNE : Well, college is expensive, and I did have a friend that had to stop going because her parents too, made too much money on paper but, you know, they couldn’t financially support her, so. And then I also happened to know some people who got by that tricky little thing by getting married, because once you’re married you don’t have to account for you parents financials any more. And if you’re a poor college student, and your spouse is a poor college student, then you get a lot more financial aid.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, that’s interesting, and what a nice segway.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Right? ‘Cause the first fic that I have chosen is called "Let's Get Married" by Thisusernameistakenagain, and the summary is “College is expensive, marriage brings financial aid, and Waverly and Nicole are best friends [and] roommates”.

DARKWICCAN : Ah! Okay, so this a scenario where – okay, so wait, I have to ask, I have to pretend like I haven’t read this story – so, Delayne, who’s idea is it to get married?

DELAYNE : “Haught_Shit” is – clearly they’re using a messaging app, ‘cause “Haught_Shit” texts “ICall-Sh0tgun” with “We should get married”.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] So, is this a drunk text?

DELAYNE : That’s what Waverly assumes, until Nicole shows up and it turns out she just had a little bit of pot brownie, so she was merely high, it was –

DARKWICCAN : Okay.

DELAYNE : - a high text.

DARKWICCAN : It was a high text, okay. Alright. And that is something that is kinda interesting about this story, is that the author uses text conversation a lot to sort of drive the story forward, in fact, often in place of regular dialogue, where you would normally have dialogue, you have the characters communicating over text, which, does move things pretty quickly.

DELAYNE : Yes, yes it does. One of my favorite scenes I actually cause – the way it’s described, it sounds like they’re at a dorm together, because they’re both sitting on their respective beds –

DARKWICCAN : Mhm.

DELAYNE : - and they’re texting each other. [laughter] While in the same room, and this – that made me laugh so hard, because I had a roommate that I – at this point, I was in an apartment, and she was usually hiding in her room - but yeah, I had to use – what was it called? ICQ? Was that the old texting, the old messaging app that everyone used back in the day?

DARKWICCAN : Oh, I don’t know, I used AOL Instant Messenger, that was my thing. And, you know, today that’s still just as true, y'know, kids will sit next to each other, texting each other, like, they’ll be a foot apart texting each other ‘cause they don’t want their parents, or any adults nearby to hear what they’re saying to each other, so they’ll text. It’s basically the equivalent of passing notes.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So Nicole comes up with this idea that they should get married for the purposes of financial aid, so – are they even a couple when they start off? They’re just friends?

DELAYNE : Yeah, they’re friends, definitely not a couple. In fact, Waverly is still with Champ, right, and her first reaction is like, “Well, wouldn’t that be cheating on Champ?” But then she comes around to it by being like, “Oh, he won’t even notice”. Like, that’s terrible.

DARKWICCAN : That is terrible, and it really makes you go, now, wait a second, if your boyfriend wouldn’t even notice that you had gotten married, is this really somebody you wanna be with? ‘Cause if they’re that disaffected, like, y'know, there’s that, like, not even, yeah, obvious, like you say. Y'know, ‘cause a partner, a good partner is someone who is attentive, but not overly attentive, but aware of your needs, aware of what’s going on in your life.

DELAYNE : Right.

DARKWICCAN : y'know, communicates.

DELAYNE : Champ gets worse in this, unfortunately. And that was a bit rough, yeah, that was a bit rough to read.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, yeah, well, what I understand is that she ultimately breaks it with him. Now, does she break it off with him because he’s an asshole, or does she break it off with him because she starts having feelings for Nicole, or kind of a whacky combination of the two of those things?

DELAYNE : She did invite Nicole to Christmas, so I think she starting to maybe realize some things. But, most importantly, she promises to start spending more time with Champ, and she goes to find him with, y'know, another woman, because, of course, he’s a cheating bastard. And so she breaks it off with him then –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, okay.

DELAYNE : - and then we find out Champ is willing to hit women when he’s angry, and, _no bueno_.

DARKWICCAN : _No bueno_ , no, nope. It’s one of those things where, y'know, it’s kind of, the Champ from the television series is just douchey McDouche [ph] Town, but I don’t think he’d ever raise a hand to Waverly. Or Nicole. I mean there’s that moment where he starts to sort of rush up the stairs, in one twelve, but – or Season One, Episode Twelve, right – but I think that’s more because he’s wigging out form the poison that he’s accidently been chugging, more than he actually has hostile intent toward Waverly or anybody up the stairs from him, I think he just sort of, his body just sort of jerks that direction. Other people might think, no, no, he was definitely going for something. I don’t, personally, but I’m happy to debate. Nonetheless, that is not the Champ in this story. The Champ in this story is a –

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - just – he is, talk about a shit ticket. [laughter]

DELAYNE : And he’s in a fraternity, so he has a bunch of shit-ticket dudebros with him, and there’s another encounter later.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, ‘cause he’s in a fraternity.

DELAYNE : Yeah, and so another incident with Nicole and Wynonna at the bar, and one of these shit-tickets tries to hit on them, and of course that doesn’t go well.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm.

DELAYNE : And then it becomes a whole big thing that I, y'know, when Champ first hits Waverly, I wasn’t sure this was going to be unpacked at all –

DARKWICCAN : Mhm.

DELAYNE : - it sort of kinda went through it quickly, but then they brought it back around, and the dudebros get involved, and there’s a whole trial and everything, so.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, but we will say that, it doesn’t really give too much away, I think, to say that Champ gets his due process and comeuppance. But in the process, y'know, as Waverly and Nicole have kind of started in on a genuine romantic relationship with each other, they end up going through, y'know, the process of dealing with the events that occur with Champ, and Champ’s cohorts from the fraternity, y'know, and it drives them closer, and then there’s some miscommunication that drives them apart, and it’s not ever - it’s not an easy relationship. I mean, ultimately end game is always Wayhaught, but I like the fact that everything wasn’t butterflies and roses, y'know, I like the fact that there was some, y'know, there was a little bit of, the relationship was fraught, right? So…

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Because then they had to work through those issues, which made them only stronger in the end. So there’s that.

DELAYNE : Well said.

DARKWICCAN : Thank you.

DELAYNE : Thank you.

DARKWICCAN : I think we’ve dwelled on this one long enough. What do you think?

DELAYNE : Yeah, yeah, let’s move along.

DARKWICCAN : Let’s move along. To my first pick, and just to really quickly clarify, as usual, when we’re talking about multiple fics, we typically talk about four fics, two fics each. So my first pick, of two, is "I'll spread my wings (and [I'll] learn how to fly)" by maidenstar. And this is a pretty popular fic within the fic-reading fandom.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : This is a story where the characters are a bit older, Waverly is currently working on her PHD, Nicole is at the Toronto – or, sorry, the Ontario Police College, finalizing her, y'know, training and degree as well. And they’re not close together at all, we’re talking major distance here, because Nicole is in Ottawa, and Waverly is basically in Purgatory. And that is about the distance, if we’re using the United States map as a reference point, that is the distance from the top of Idaho’s finger, to almost the top of New York State. So if you just look at a map of the U.S. and put your fingers in those two locations and then slide them up about an inch, then you’re in the Canadian equivalent, Calgary to Ottawa.

So they are far away, this is a distance situation. And although this wouldn’t meet the standard of slow burn for some readers out there, cough, cough, Heather. [laughter] I know she’s listening to this. So, you got a shout out.

To me, this does equate a slow burn, because they physically cannot get to each other for a very long time. It takes them a while, yeah. And it also takes a while for Waverly to come to terms with what she’s feeling, y'know, and all of their communications are pretty much over email, or text. Do they have phone calls?

DELAYNE : They, I do believe they Facetime each other, is when they first talk, so they can see each other.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, okay.

DELAYNE : Yeah. So she -

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that’s right.

DELAYNE : - interviews about modern police procedure, y'know, to –

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : - sort of compare, in her thesis.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yeah. So Waverly’s doing a thesis on law enforcement in, y'know, the western time period, what we can sort of consider the Old West, so that’s what she’s been reaching out to Nicole for, she is trying to find archival documentation, historical documents, to support her thesis. And so she reaches out to the Ontario Police… College?

DELAYNE : College.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Archive. Yes. And Nicole is there because she has sort of been benched from boot camp due to an injury. So while she is healing from that, she’s been tasked with earning her hours working as an archivist for the Ontario Police College. So that was a nice little, y'know, gimmick to get the two of them communicating with each other.

But the thing I really love about what gets this ball rolling with the two of them is, y'know, Waverly’s been sending rather administrative style, very professional, y'know, emails, with a little bit of a hint of personality, but for the most part, y'know, just very much, “Here’s what I need, here are the details, can you get this to me? Thank you so much for…”, y'know –

DELAYNE : “Best regards.” [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : “Best – warmest regards,” y'know, “Waverly Earp”. And so, like just as the same, y'know Nicole has been responding professionally. And then. [laughter] Unfortunately, in this world, Waverly is also dating a version of Champ, and just like Champ does, he gets caught cheating by Waverly. But she’s not prepared to, she doesn’t know how to break it off with him. But when she discover that he’s cheating on her, she immediately sends a rather – would you – angry – would you say drunk, as well?

DELAYNE : It’s –

DARKWICCAN : Email.

DELAYNE : It’s a drunkish, because she is exhausted and in the library, and she’s been up for two –

DARKWICCAN : It’s punch drunk, yeah. She’s punch drunk. So she immediately sends off a note to Rosita, her best friend, y'know, or she thinks she has, anyway. And lo and behold, she gets a reply back from Nicole! [laughter] Who offers up her advice on the situation, which is basically, “dump the bastard, he doesn’t deserve you”.

DELAYNE : I like how she realizes, “this probably wasn’t meant for me, but here’s my opinion anyway”. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : So I love how maidenstar used that as a turning point for their, y'know, relationship with each other, to go from professional to personal, like [snaps fingers] instantly, and changed the dynamic of their communications with each other, and allowed them to y'know become more friendly, and then borderline flirtatious, on one end at least, as, y'know, Waverly’s starting to try to figure herself out. I just really like the way that maidenstar laid out the sort of evolution of their relationship towards what we know it’s gonna be. And I also like how, when Waverly does finally meet Nicole in person, and cannot deny the sort of spark that exists between them, how instead of it being, again - I guess I just like conflict – instead of it being, this like “and they lived happily ever after”, instead Waverly freaks out for a minute. And I was like, that’s more true to life.

DELAYNE : I like how she, y'know, they finally see each other in person, she just runs up and gives a big old hug, like, “oh, wait, personal space”. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, like she can’t help it, but by the end of that visit, which they’re not calling a date –

DELAYNE : Not a date.

DARKWICCAN : - by the end of that visit, y'know, when a couple other things happen, and Waverly, y'know, kind of impulsive, compulsive things happen, and Waverly doesn’t know what to do with herself. And it wasn’t Nicole who pushed the issue, here, because Nicole would never.

DARKWICCAN : Right?

DARKWICCAN : As we know. So, I just like the fact that Waverly does have a momentary freak out –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - and it takes her a minute, or several weeks, to kind of figure out just what it is she wants. So I really, y'know, I like that it wasn’t like a magic kiss with a strings, [laughter] y'know, the strings and the choir of angels, y'know, suddenly came up, and everything suddenly became crystal clear, and y'know cue credits. I like the fact that that’s not what happens, so. But if want to know clearly what happens, you gotta read it, and again it’s "I'll spread my wings (and learn how to fly)" by maidenstar. Personal favorite.

DELAYNE : Now, when you tasked me with picking, as you do.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. I go, “Pick! Pick something, dammit!”

DELAYNE : My next one I thought of immediately, but after reading that pick that you just mentioned, I, ugh, man, that was a close, I think they’re pretty close, pretty on par.

DARKWICCAN : You almost stole my fic, is what you’re saying.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Eh.

DARKWICCAN : It’s okay, ‘cause if you had stolen my fic, my selection, I would have immediately picked this one that you’re about to intro. So, no matter what, this particular choice was gonna make it on the show today.

DELAYNE : Right, right. So my second choice, or I guess, technically, what I just sadi, would have been my first choice, but the one I am speaking about in –

DARKWICCAN : Everybody clear what’s going on right now? [laughter] I just want to make sure everyone is on the same page, we’re not talking about her second choice, we’re talking about what would have been her first choice, if this hadn’t been second choice. So just so they all know, we’re not – okay, we’re clear? Good. Please proceed.

DELAYNE : [laughter] "Whatever You'll Give Me" by Woody7066.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : And in this one, Waverly commutes to the big city for college, that’s where she meets police academy cadet Nicole. And this one is, I guess, canon divergent -

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, -

DELAYNE : - is what we call.

DARKWICCAN : - I’d say that’s a good way of describing it, yeah.

DELAYNE : In that Waverly meets Nicole the year before the show would start., because she’s commuting to the big city for some of her – does it mention that she’s still doing online classes, or…?

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, yeah.

DELAYNE : So some of the classes are in the big city, and she goes Tuesday and Thursdays into the big city for these classes, and that’s where she meets Nicole.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : And I just, I like this one so much, I can’t… [laughter] I took terrible notes because I was reading it, and enjoying reading it, and when I went back for my re-read I was enjoying it again and didn’t take any notes. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, so basically you were so caught up in the sweeping narrative that you just couldn’t bring yourself to make any notes about what you liked?

DELAYNE : Yes, pretty much. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Okay. Well.

DELAYNE : So what did you like about it, DW, how about you tell me?

DARKWICCAN : So what I really like about this story is that, I like the idea of establishing Waverly and Nicole as a couple prior to the start of the series canon, I think that was a really cool idea. I liked following their courtship, I liked how y'know Waverly was coming to terms with her feelings. That’s something I seem to kinda enjoy reading about in stories, is Nicole being the established “I’m here, I’m queer, I know what I want”, and Waverly sort of finding her way into that relationship. Probably ‘cause it sort of mirrors mine and my wife’s relationship a little bit, so there’s some relativity there, in that y I was definitely the “I’m here, I’m queer, I know what I want”, my wife was like “I think I know what I want, let’s figure it out together”, and so…

DELAYNE : Hey! [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Heyo! So I just, I like seeing that mirrored in stories that I’m reading.

DELAYNE : Especially when they’re well told.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and this is an exceptionally well-told story. I started reading it the minute it started posting up on AO3, and I followed it avidly throughout, y'know, as it was being posted. It’s still going, it’s up to chapter twenty, but it’s not complete.

DELAYNE : But we’re already to almost seventy thousand words, too.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, so I’m excited to see where it’s gonna end up. I really liked how we get to meet all these characters before the storyline of the series starts. So not just Nicole and Waverly, but we also get to meet Chrissy, don’t we, and we get to meet, y'know, Gus, and basically all these other characters. We get to meet Shae, and she is slightly different from the Shae that we meet in the series, and it’s because they’re not – they weren’t married, they just dated in this storyline.

DELAYNE : Right.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : It had not mentioned yet –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : - I believe.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : It’s hard, I do have a lot in my brain right now, so. Like there’s definitely Shae is different in that it’s made very clear that Shae is still interested in perhaps getting back together with Nicole, co.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, yeah.

DELAYNE : Very big difference.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and so she’s a little bit more…predatory.

DELAYNE :[laughter] That is a good word, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, she’s a little more predatory, and – but Nicole, y'know, we know where Nicole’s heart lies so it’s kind of one of those things, it’s more of a bump in the road than any real sort of angst, y'know? I mean it’s sort of a wee bit angsty, but not like, “Oh god!” y'know? “What’s going to happen next?” ‘cause we know, we know it’s going to be fine.

But before we move on, one of the things that I do like about this is that again, it is canon divergent, and ultimately becomes canon adjacent, and I like how the idea of the goings-on of Purgatory - meaning the sort of mystical and supernatural things - are brought to Nicole’s attention to understand before she makes any sort of major decisions about where she’s going to end up when she graduates from the academy.

So I thought, I really I liked the way that Woody handled that. ‘Cause it’s one of those things where we don’t know yet, from the series, why Nicole accepted Randy’s offer of a job with the Purgatory Police Department. We can make assumptions.

Kat herself made assumptions as to why she went there, but then she was saying at Clexacon, which we’re still recovering from, yeah, as she was learning more about her own character’s backstory, she had to basically take everything she’d come up with, [laughter] and chuck it out the window, and sit down one night and re-write her entire backstory based on the new information.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So we don’t know, y'know, what led her to the decision, so it was kind of fun to see Woody’s take on it, like what if Nicole had all of this information up front, while also being in a relationship with Waverly, would that affect her decision to move to Purgatory.

DELAYNE : And swagger into Shorty’s bar. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : And swagger into Shorty’s bar, yes. So, again, this is an ongoing story, I’m excited to see where Woody takes us next, but I think that we’ve said all we can really say about it, so we should probably get to our final fic today, that will take us into the interview. Our fourth fic today is a wonderful story called "Wishin' and Hopin'" by may favorite author to beatbox to, Bootsncatz. [sings] nbootzncatz nbootzncatz nbootzncatz nbootzncatz. Y'know, I actually met her at Clexacon, she is adorable. And I –

DELAYNE : Agreed!

DARKWICCAN : - yes, and her wife is amazing, but I kept doing that, I’d like walk up behind her and be like “nbootzncatz nbootzncatz”. I kept waiting for her to like start rapping, and she never did, and was like “augh”.

DELAYNE : [laughter] She promised on Twitter, I think she promised.

DARKWICCAN : She did, that next time, the next time we meet, yes.

DELAYNE : You lay down the beat, she will take it.

DARKWICCAN : She will start free styling, yes. [laughter] Oh, so this fic is just a joy, I love it so much. I think I love this fic an unreasonable amount. It is a college AU set in 1960s, I guess the background of the ‘60s, they’re at university together. Waverly is –

DELAYNE : Arizona.

DARKWICCAN : - in Arizona.

DELAYNE : In Arizona.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, that’s right, because Nicole was transferring from Colorado.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Right. And Waverly is a hippie, an anti-war, y'know, free-lovin’ gal.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Literally.

DARKWICCAN : Well. Well. We’ll discuss that in a moment.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Okay.

DARKWICCAN : And Nicole has just lost her brother, almost a year prior, in Vietnam. She wears his army fatigues jacket everywhere she goes. I think she actually wears his dog tags too.

DELAYNE : Yes. And drives his car.

DARKWICCAN : And drives his car. He was a hugely meaningful part of her life. He accepted her when she came out, her parents did not. And so his loss has affected her, incredibly deeply, to the point where she has decided that she too wants to serve her country, and has decided that once she graduates from college she’s going to join up, with the idea of going over to Vietnam as a nurse. ‘Cause there’s not a lot –

DELAYNE : ‘Cause that was –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : - pretty much the only the thing you could do, as a woman.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Only thing in the field, only kind of fieldwork.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Otherwise you are a, y'know, relegated to administrative stuff, for the most part. And she wanted to be in the field, because that’s where her brother was, and again, just super important to her. So already we have this sort of dynamic set up where they’re on opposing sides of a pretty serious things going on in their lives, and y'know, my mom was in college in the – I know you can speak to this, ‘cause your parents too kind of, I think have a more interesting backstory than my parents.

DELAYNE : Yeah, when my mom first met my dad, she didn’t realize he was in military, y'know, ‘cause once you’re out of boot camp, y'know, as long you’re hair is up when you’re in uniform, y'know, they’re otherwise not picky. And so my dad used to gel it up, and so when he was in his civvies, his hair was y'know a little bit longer, a little bit loose, it wasn’t as obvious that he was in the Navy. And yeah, my mom, she graduated in ’69, and my dad actually graduated in ’70. So they were right at the tail end of the war, but my dad is a Vietnam era veteran, he never went to Vietnam, but he did go near there, yeah, just, definitely an interesting dynamic, ‘cause my parents are absolutely, completely opposite of each other. And so much, this Nicole and Waverly reminds me of them so very, very much.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm. One thing I really, really enjoyed about this story is we do have a Nicole/Shae relationship. When Nicole leaves Colorado, to transfer to the University of Arizona, it’s because she needs to get away, she’s just sort of leaves her family behind, she just can’t really be around her parents, who don’t accept her, and the fact that her brother is gone, it’s just all too much and she needs a fresh start. So she ends up leaving.

And, but she and Shae are still together, even at a distance, and the thing I really about this Shae is she really does seem more like the Shae from the television show, where she is mature, she really does care deeply for Nicole. But she’s not selfish in her affections, it’s not, y'know, only she can be – Nicole is mine, and you can’t have her – it’s very much she just wants what is best for Nicole, and what makes Nicole happy, and will be good for her in the long run.

So I just think that’s a really kind of mature way of approaching it, and I really appreciated that because there is something to be said for two adults who realize that, while they care for each other very much, maybe they’re not meant for each other romantically, or in that way.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : They’re meant to be friends. Supportive friends, but nothing beyond that. And Shae helped navigate Nicole through an incredibly difficult time of her life, and ultimately realized that that was what her job was, that was why she was there, that was her purpose, but her purpose going forward was not to keep – hold Nicole back, and keep her in this relationship, but instead to, y'know, release her and let her, y'know, go forward, and find herself with Waverly. Shae can see that Waverly was who Nicole was meant to be with, even if Waverly couldn’t understand that about herself yet. Which, I just thought that was really beautiful.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I definitely liked this Shae.

DARKWICCAN : Bootz is not one to shy away from the complexities of relationships, and she does, she absolutely, here we’ve got a Waverly who is, y'know, we joked about being free-lovin’, well, she kind of is, she’s afraid of commitment, so she kind of uses that aspect of hippiness, the hippie movement, as a way to protect herself. So she I sort having this relationship with Rosita, which is basically a friends with benefits type scenario, and the thing is, is that’s what Waverly’s got in her mind, there’s no commitment here.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : “We can see other people, it’s fine, no big deal”. Whereas Rosita is of the “actually, I’m in love with you, and it would be really great if we could make this a thing”.

DELAYNE : [laughter] And you, yeah, when you’re in love with someone, you’re willing to put up their rules in hopes that maybe they’ll change their mind. How many people have had that kind of relationship, y'know?

DARKWICCAN : Ugh, you can’t see, but I’m raising my hand.

DELAYNE : [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s tricky, and it’s heartbreaking, and it’s heart-aching, and it’s – but it is something that is true. And it’s true, it’s absolutely true, y'know, and Boots doesn’t shy away from showing their relationship, both the physical and the sort of emotional side of their – what Waverly would really want us not to call a relationship. But, y'know, it’s just a fact of the story, it’s a fact of who they are to each other, and, y'know, it’s like, y'know, there’s some folks for whom this would be an absolute deal breaker, as far as reading the fic. But not for me. I find these type of relationships, sort of pre-Wayhaught relationships, to be very character-building, and add a fullness, and a richness to the story, that might otherwise be missing.

DELAYNE : Agreed. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : And it’s not just Rosita and Waverly, who have a relationship with each other before Waverly and Nicole get together. Nicole also kind of, after she and Shae split, Nicole also sort of explores the dating scene, and she ends up dating an original character that Boots created. So this gal that Nicole sort of dates for a little while, who’s character name Jessie, is also very much is like, she sees Waverly, and she sees Nicole, and she sees the two of them together, and their energy, and their chemistry, and she’s like, “aha, okay, I am – “

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - merely a way station on this road that Nicole is on, to ultimately be in this relationship with Waverly”.

DELAYNE : And I think Boots did good job showing that, y'know, as much as Waverly is different from Nicole, Jessie seems more like, on the outside, seems more compatible. Y'know, they do have more similarities, and agree on certain things, and so that definitely makes it more interesting.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. And when Waverly and Nicole do finally become official with each other, officially girlfriends, it’s still not easy. It’s still not easy, y'know, and again I like that. It makes for a more –

DELAYNE : Relationships aren’t easy!

DARKWICCAN : They aren’t, they aren’t. There’s a lot of navigation that has to occur, there’s a lot of compromise, on both sides, that has to occur. And one thing that Nicole will not compromise on is her decision to join the Army. And this hurts Waverly deeply, she takes it very personally. And it really takes her a long time to understand that it’s not about her. It’s about Nicole, and what Nicole needs to do, for herself, so that she can live her life without regrets. And then Boots takes us to war. She takes us to Vietnam, and she shows us what Nicole is seeing, and experiencing, and that experience -

DELAYNE : And, oh, my god.

DARKWICCAN : - is very vivid, and very affecting. Both for Nicole, and as the reader, it’s very affecting.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and I feel like I’m just talking, and talking, and talking, I just love this story so much. But it’s just, she does such a terrific job of capturing, y'know, I’m sure she must have done loads, and loads of, and buckets of research, because she really captures the experience of being in this war zone, as a woman, in this time period, she just does a killer job capturing it, and takes us through to a point where an event occurs, in the field, in Vietnam. And then she uses this moment, this sort of moment where the reader catches their, like their kind of, we don’t catch our breath, we gasp. We kinda go “Uhh!”

DELAYNE : Yes, big gasp.

DARKWICCAN : And then, up to that point, the entire story has been from Nicole’s point of view, and when that happens, [snaps fingers] boom we shift back in time, and it’s now all from Waverly’s point of view. Which is just a genius move. [laughter] Because even though we’re left wondering what the outcome of the event in Vietnam is, y'know –

DELAYNE : On [the edge of] our seats, yeah?

DARKWICCAN : - on the edge of our seats, but now we’re seeing everything from Waverly’s point of view, and we get a clearer understanding of why Waverly is the way she is, why she feels the way she feels, why she’s opposed to commitment, or afraid of it, y'know, and her struggles to kind of get her shit together internally to be the Waverly that, y'know, that is meant to be with Nicole. She’s not changing herself, she’s growing up, and that is the thing. A person should never really have to change who they are, fundamentally, in order to be with someone, but there is something to be said for growing up. Because that is a natural change that’s going to occur –

DELAYNE : Yep.

DARKWICCAN : - y'know? So as she fully matures, and grows closer to Nicole, and really cannot deny her feelings and her attractions for Nicole, she grows up a bit in that time. And so when Nicole – I’m not spoiling anything, here, Nicole does come back from Vietnam.

DELAYNE : I think that’s something that everyone is okay with knowing.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. But then we see Waverly take on the role of almost spouse, really.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : In how she really does, y'know, take care of Nicole when Nicole comes back, as Nicole has all the struggles that, y'know, we’ve kind of come to expect from anyone coming from a very violent and scary situation like – basically, she’s suffering from post-traumatic stress.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : But watching the way that Waverly cares, and navigates her through this healing process is just.. it’s like, “aha! There’s the Waverly –“

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : “- that not only deserves Nicole, but that Nicole deserves”.

DELAYNE : Well, you were talking about, y'know, gosh it would be interesting to talk to Boots about all the research she has done. So I think we should probably do that.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, let’s do that. Yes! So, yeah, we’re very excited, we had, of course, we had Boots on last week with IamTheGayNerd, to talk about their high school fic, so it just seems only right that we carry on with the college fic, and have Boots graduate from high school to college, so she is joining us today to talk about this fic, ‘Wishin’ and Hopin’’. [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Theme from A Summer Place by Percy Faith and His Orchestra

DARKWICCAN : And welcome back everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ . The podcast dedicated to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me Is my co-host:

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we are super excited because we have managed to trick her into coming back. [laughter] It only took a little bit of light bondage, we finally convinced her to come join us again: Bootzncatz, the author of the tremendous fic, ‘Wishin’ and Hopin’’. Welcome back to the show.

BOOTS : Oh, no, I’m glad to be back. Like the light bondage, it was actually fine, it was good.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, well, y'know, yeah, well, everything I learned about bondage, I learned from fic, so hopefully…

DELAYNE : [laughter] You –

DARKWICCAN : I hope I got it right.

DELAYNE : - have thrown me with that light bondage comment. I don’t know if I’ll be able to function for the rest of this interview, just so you know.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, well, tell you what, Delayne, we’ll give you a second to kind of collect yourself. Boots, how – I’m going to ask you the softball we lob at every guest: how did you get started in fanfiction? What drew you into this world?

BOOTS : When I was young and naïve, and didn’t realize what fanfiction was, I found on the AOL chat boards, like kids room chat boards thing, I think I was like ten or eleven, I think it was _Lizzie McGuire_ first, that I found. ‘Cause I loved _Lizzie McGuire_ , I was actually, I was trying to watch _Buffy_ and I wasn’t allowed to, so I pushed between _Buffy_ and _Lizzie McGuire_ , and that’s how I got into _Lizzie McGuire_.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Wow, Lizzie McGuire, vampire slayer.

BOOTS : Yeah. So it was a weird mix, but it worked out, I guess. ‘Cause I got into, yeah, I got into _Lizzie McGuire_ and _Harry Potter_ fanfiction. _Lizzie McGuire_ fanfiction taught me what sex was, so that’s fun.

DARKWICCAN : Well, we all have to learn somewhere.

BOOTS : We all have to learn somewhere. Oh, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Well, I’m guessing if your parents weren’t letting you watch _Buffy_ , they weren’t very forthcoming with other information.

BOOTS : No. I mean, when I was watching _Buffy_ I actually thought that that was – sorry, this is going – I thought it was rubbing your nipples together, ‘cause that’s what I saw on Buffy. [laughter] Like you just saw their top halves like, going together, and I was like, “oh, I guess you like put your nipples together and just like rub on each other”, or something. I legit thought that was what it was, and then, y'know, stumbling into fanfiction I was like “oh, what is happening, I don’t know, but I guess this is how babies are made”.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, it depends, it depends on who the partner, the partnership. Yeah.

BOOTS : I definitely, for like a softball first question, I really took that out the fence way park, but.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : It makes me think – if any of you have ever followed Diana Cage, from _AfterEllen_ , and all of those things way back when. There’s some podcast, she talked about booby rubbing lesbians, and –

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, she must have also been reading, or watching, the same stuff, I guess, I don’t know. [laughter] Well, we started off in on an excellent foot here.

BOOTS : I’m so sorry, I just, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : It’s okay. So, what got you into _Wynonna Earp_?

BOOTS : I was unemployed, and super sad, and I was binge-watching every single TV show that I could find that was interesting, to keep me busy. And so I stumbled – I was like “oh this girl’s really hot”, like I found Melanie, I felt like, “yeah, she’s super hot, what show is this?” And I was like, “Oh, cowboys? I love cowboys”. Like, western are like, one hundred per cent my thing. I was like this is perfect. And then I watched the entirety of, I think, yeah, the entirety of the first season I like a day, or so, like two days.

DELAYNE : Standard operating procedure.

BOOTS : And then – yeah. And then I watched it again, pretty much immediately afterwards, and it was just a downhill spiral from there.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] So what other fandoms have you written for, besides _Wynonna Earp_?

BOOTS : Before Wynonna Earp was, it was the _Glee_ fandom, it was Faberry.

DARKWICCAN : Ooookay.

BOOTS : Yeah, I still haven’t quite recovered from it, it’s an ongoing process. I’m still angry about it. But I just, y'know, it’s a part of me now, and I have to accept it, or whatever.

DARKWICCAN : Well, y'know, fic and the online community is a good way to kind of process through…

BOOTS : To get through traumatizing times in your life, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely. Well, how do you think Delayne and I survived the demise of Willow and Tara?

BOOTS : Oh, man.

DARKWICCAN : It was all KittenBoard, all the time.

BOOTS : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. We wouldn’t have made it otherwise, I don’t think. It was a very, very dark time.

DELAYNE : And I was actually late to the game, I watched it in the wrong order.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, that’s right, you did. Yeah.

DELAYNE : Yeah, so.

DARKWICCAN : But, speaking of dark times, and also very light times, there’s a very sort of, an interesting time in our nation’s history. You made some interesting choices here, with ‘Wishin’ and Hopin’’. Delayne, I know you had a question.

DELAYNE : I definitely have a question, because my parents, my father is a Vietnam-era veteran, and my mother graduated in 1969, they almost didn’t let her walk because she refused to wear shoes. So my military father and my hippie mother met, and I want to know why did you choose the ‘60s, and why did you choose Vietnam, as your setting?

BOOTS : Well the ‘60s came first, before I really developed the whole Nicole storyline, and her wanting to go into the Army, I just, growing up with – my grandmother raised me, so when we’d play music in the car and stuff, it was always that are music, it was always, y'know, The Shirelles, and all of that good stuff. And it’s still my go-to for just music to put on to think, or, y'know, my happy music, that’s just the stuff that I love.

And I know that the ‘60s is like a real shit period for a lot of people, like I’m very aware, as a queer person of color, that the ‘60s was not fun for a lot of people. But I think out of the ‘60s also was born a lot of these movements that we have today.

And it was a lot of, y'know, think about it, if you have sounds like ‘Will you love you tomorrow’, that was really one of the first sexual, like any sound, for a woman, and it’s such like a tame song now, but back then it was such a huge deal that they were talking about like –

DELAYNE : Scandalous.

BOOTS : - yeah, so scandalous, like sleeping with someone and not knowing if they’re going to be around tomorrow, like a one night stand, like that is really the start of all these wonderful things that have come about, y'know, today. And it’s just a very, I think, interesting time in our history. And then when I was writing it I was just like, when I was writing Nicole, it’s like goddammit, she wants to join the Army, I can feel it, so I just ended up throwing in that, where she wanted to be, y'know.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I was really surprised that you actually had Nicole go through with it.

BOOTS : I knew I couldn’t not. I knew that she would not back out just because of Waverly. I knew that it was more – it was too big of a deal for her, and for her to kind of come to terms with her brother’s death, and what he went through, and why he needed to go, for her to back out of it because of a girl. Even if it was the love of her life. Because she, in her head, the two – neither was more important than the other, and both were equally as important to her, so she really needed to do that.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it was a real internal battle, for her. That became an external one.

BOOTS : Yeah. Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So, touching on something you mentioned in talking about the song, ‘Will you still love me tomorrow’, being sort of radical, and breaking a lot of rules, and being shocking in that it was a song about having a one night stand, and not knowing where, it was written from a female point of view, and not knowing what was going to come next. I love that you don’t shy away from sort of bittersweet sadness of two people falling out of love with each other. And I think you made it really poignant by Shae recognizing that Nicole’s mind is on someone else when they’re making love, when she’s visiting Nicole over Christmas, I believe. And of course the person, that someone else that Nicole’s thinking about, is Waverly.

What was important to you to illustrate and communicate with the end of Nicole and Shae’s relationship?

BOOTS : I think, for me, everything about that relationship was that they did love each other, at one point. There was definitely a point that they were in love with each other, but, y'know, love is this wonderfully horrible thing, in that it always is changing. It could either be, y'know, changing from romantic love to friend love, or from friend love to romantic love, like it really, love is ever-changing, whether it’s, y'know, I love you, I love you in this way, and now that we’re married, it’s just, y'know, it’s always changing, that’s why it is what it is, and I’ll say that again, I guess, because I like that phrase. But it, I just wanted to show with them that, y'know, just because two people grow apart, and they’re love changes, and things don’t always work out, it doesn’t have to be a bitter break-up, it doesn’t have to be lots of arguing, and cursing, and all that stuff. Sometimes things just end, and that’s just how it is, and y'know if both of them can recognize that. In this case, Shae recognized it before Nicole. ‘Cause Nicole would have never, I don’t think, realized that she didn’t love Shae that way.

DARKWICCAN : No, Nicole is loyal to a fault.

BOOTS : Yes.

DELAYNE : Yes.

BOOTS : Nicole would hold on until the bitter end, convincing herself that she was in love with Shae that way. Especially after Shae helped her through everything that Shae helped her through, with her brother dying, and all of that, and her parents kicking her out. So it was really up to Shae at that point to be like, you know what? I see that you’re not in this the way that I’m in this, and that’s okay, and I’m just gonna let you do your thing, and I still love you, and we’ll still always be friends, but, y'know, it’s just gotta be different now.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I really enjoyed that, because there’s so many fics, it’s kind of one of those, it’s almost one of those tropes that you see happening in fics, where if a character is starting off with someone other than their endgame partner, there’s usually some explosive argument, or the character’s, y'know, current partner in the relationship is not a very nice person, there’s always something that’s flawed about them in a negative way, but I love the fact that you kept Shae as a good and decent person, who does genuinely love Nicole, and just wants Nicole to be happy, and wants what’s best for Nicole, instead of being very selfish and focused on her own needs.

DELAYNE : And that harkens back to the canon, too, ‘cause that’s how Shae is portrayed in canon, and it was a break-up that was not explosive.

BOOTS : I was just gonna say, I don’t know if you realize, but I really like giving Nicole a hard time, so for that –

DARKWICCAN : No, really?

BOOTS : [laughter] I know. I really like throwing her under the bus a lot. So I wanted to make it hard for her. I think it’s much more heartbreaking, and it can be almost a little more realistic, in a way, too, if it’s harder for her. If it’s harder for her to break up – it’s much harder to break up with someone if you think you still love them, and you still have these feelings for them, than if they’re y'know a raging bitch the entire time.

DELAYNE : So, as you slowly dissolved their relationship, you also tend to give us kind of bits and pieces, all throughout this fic, so when we first see the car, y'know, it’s that first paragraph, we’re hoping it runs, it’s kind of a junker. A little bit later, we learn it’s a Cadillac, and then I think chapter two, we finally learn that it’s green, so it seems like this sort of parallels how we learn about Nicole’s brother, Chris, in just kind of little bits and pieces here and there. So was that parallel purposeful?

BOOTS : I was always told in film school that if someone picks up on some kind of symbol, or something, that you did not intend, but it sounds good, to say that you did it on purpose. So…

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Yes.

BOOTS : I’m going to say that that was on purpose… mostly it’s just I avoid huge paragraphs of description, I guess, ‘cause I’m not a huge fan of like two paragraphs of what one character is wearing, or stuff like that. For me, that takes me out of it, unless it like truly lends to the story, I’m not super into it. And as far a slowly revealing the stuff about her brother, I kind of subconsciously set up my fics in the way of like either a TV show, or a movie kind of way, where you learn things throughout, like something that keeps you like, but what about this? Like, I need to know more about this, I need to wait and tune into the next chapter, or whatever, to learn that little bit more. Because if you just get it all up front in one, y'know, John Steinbeck length paragraph, it’s all out there, like you don’t wonder anymore, it’s just there in the world.

DARKWICCAN : Right, it’s more interesting when you keep stuff close to your chest, and just slowly leak out little bits and pieces.

BOOTS : I think so, which is why I do it that way. I’m sure other people don’t feel that way, but, that’s how I like it.

DARKWICCAN : Well, everyone had their own style when they come at it, y'know.

DELAYNE : But no, I really like what you said there, Boots, that’s – I think it really shows, because Nicole isn’t gonna just be open about it in the first place, so, her revealing it bits at a time makes more sense. And then I wanna, y'know, were there particular choices about the car? Because if we talk about maybe what, y'know, last week, I don’t think I mentioned Nicole’s car in the high school AU, but I kinda have a thing for cars, and Nicole drove a cool car, then, and to me this Cadillac means a lot to Nicole, and my cars have meant a lot to me, so the choices that you made about the car, what kind of car it was, that just sort of on the fly, or…? How much research did you put into Nicole’s car?

BOOTS : I guess I would say a medium level of research. My uncle has a ’59 Cadillac in our backyard, so it was in our garage, in our backyard, and so I was always kind of around it. So when I was thinking of “okay, like what’s a car that I can, y'know, throw in here”. And so I thought of his car first, and then I went through, I did the research of what’s in it, like what, y'know, the basic specs were, just so I knew in case I wanted to bring it up later, at some point. I do a bunch of research, a lot of times, and I don’t always put all the details in it, y'know. If I don’t need it, I’m not gonna put it in.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

BOOTS : So I just kind of, yeah. His car was the inspiration, and then I just kind of researched from there, to make sure it would be like a do-able first car for someone, and stuff like that.

DELAYNE : Was it green?

BOOTS : Actually, no. His car is white, I just liked green better for Nicole.

DELAYNE : Oh, well, I happen to have a green, a dark forest green ’63 Ford Falcon Futura.

BOOTS : Oh, wow.

DELAYNE : [laughter] If you ever wanna use that car. It’s my favorite.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Just find a place to sneak it in. In the background in a parking lot.

[laughter]

BOOTS : That will be where a two-paragraph description of a car comes in, and the car in the background of the background of a parking lot.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, jumping back to Waverly and Nicole a bit, I’m sorry, Delayne. You didn’t give them an easy path to each other. In the process of developing the story idea, was it always on your mind to show both of their points of view, or was this an element you decided to implement to further kind of help clarify Waverly’s reasoning for being, y'know, resistant to commitment?

BOOTS : I did not plan on showing Waverly’s point of view at all. It was kind of a last a minute addition. This whole fic was actually supposed to be a pretty hefty, but short and sweet like one-shot, maybe a two parter.

DARKWICCAN : Hoo.

[laughter]

BOOTS : Yeah, so kind of got away with me there. But I just, when I started I just had this image of Nicole sitting on the steps of a university with a green Army jacket on, and sunglasses, and Waverly was sitting next to her, and she was painting a peace symbol on the jacket, and I just really liked the, I don’t know why that popped into my head when it did, but it did. And I liked the like kind of contrast between the two, of like she’s wearing this Army jacket, but here’s Waverly like putting this symbol on it. It’s kind of like a _Full Metal Jacket_ thing, I guess. But, now that I think about it.

But so it started off very short, and just like a short and sweet like, “they get together, yay”. But then when I started outlining, and diving into the characters more, I was like, “oh, shit, this is much longer than I thought it was gonna be ‘cause Waverly is super resistant to poor Nicole”.

And then as I was writing – pretty much as I got to the part where Nicole is shipped off, ‘cause I’m pretty far ahead, thankfully, I was pretty far ahead in the writing, a lot of people were asking like, “are we gonna see Waverly’s point of view, blah, blah, blah”, and I was like no, no, no, like no, I told myself I was sticking to one point of view in this story, and that’s it, that’s Nicole.

But then I realized, when Nicole got hurt, that we were not gonna see Waverly’s reaction to how she – when she got the news. And I really, really, wanted to show that. So I was like, well, oh shit, like what am I gonna do here, ‘cause I didn’t wanna do just like a one section in a paragraph, sorry, in a chapter, where suddenly we’re in Waverly’s point of view. Like, it would it feel jarring, and it would feel weird.

So I was like, you know what, I’m just gonna, maybe this is a dumb idea, but I’m gonna go and I’m just gonna write all of this from Waverly’s point of view. And then I talked to a couple people who I like bounce my ideas off of, and my beta, GayNerd, and I talked to her about it. And I was like, “is this the worst idea I’ve ever had?” and she’s like, “no, I think it’s good”, so I was like, “okay, I’m just gonna go with it then”.

And then we got five chapters of Waverly and why she is the way she is.

DARKWICCAN : I think it was an inspired decision, quite honestly. Because I know myself, as a reader, I was left, because everything was from Nicole’s point of view I think I was just like Nicole in that I was a little bit baffled, and I couldn’t understand why on earth Waverly was so, almost belligerently resistant to being exclusive with Nicole. Especially when she basically exclusively with her anyway. Why the label frightened her so much, why she just couldn’t seem to get around that in her own mind. Y'know, again, from Nicole’s point of view, like what is the problem?

And y'know I really appreciated how you had Nicole stick to her terms of engagement, y'know. [laughter] It’s like, “if we’re not together, together, then we’re only gonna go so far, and that’s my line in the sand”. Y'know, it’s like, “if you’re with me, you’re with me, and that means benefits. But if you’re refusing to commit to me, then why would I give that part of myself to you”. So, I mean, I really understood – I totally understood where Nicole was coming from, and I was mystified by Waverly, so when you got to that point, which was just such a perfect natural break –

DELAYNE : It was.

DARKWICCAN : - to switch point of view, yeah, just perfect. It was just so amazing to see Waverly’s thought process, and see her reactions from her side of the story, and yeah, I don’t know what else I’m saying here. It was just, it was really, really brilliant, really brilliant, Boots.

BOOTS : Thank you, because I’m still – like, every time I post a new one of her point of view I’m like, “oh, this is it, this is where everyone stops reading ‘cause they’re tired of this”. So, thank you.

DARKWICCAN : No, you have me riveted.

DELAYNE : But back to Waverly and her resistance, we have part of that is her relationship with Rosita. Do you think that Waverly treated Rosita unfairly, or were they like equally unfair to each other?

BOOTS : I think, in a way, they were equally unfair to each other. I mean, I’m ride or die Rosita, canon Rosita especially, no matter what. Y'know, despite the whole slamming Waverly into a table, and all that. Y'know, she’s – I’m waiting. But I don’t like to do my girl wrong. But anyways, I think they both did, because I think that Waverly, even if she wanted to deny it and say, “well I’ve put all my cards out on the table”, I think she knew, the whole time, that Rosie was, y'know, falling for her more than just a fuck buddy, sorry, I didn’t think about that, sorry.

DARKWICCAN : Friends with benefits?

BOOTS : Friends with benefits, there you go. And then, but in turn, I think that y'know Rosita knew that what Waverly wanted, Rosita knew, yeah, she’s smart, she knows she’s not gonna change Waverly’s mind, she knows her well enough to know that. I think she just hoped that it would kind of be a relationship of convenience for Waverly, if it turned out that way. That she was hoping, kind of, that she would turn her mind, but, y'know.

DELAYNE : Or maybe just be the default?

BOOTS : Yeah, exactly. Like, “oh, I can’t find anyone else, so I guess we’ll be together forever, and be happy”. So, yeah, I think they were both a little bit unfair to each other in that, definitely. I mean, I think the blame’s a little more on Waverly, I think she should have probably let her go as soon as she realized that, y'know, she was having deeper feelings for her than just, y'know, something on the side, but I think they both kind of knew what they were getting into.

DELAYNE : And was there something you were trying to demonstrate in particular with their  relationship with each other?

BOOTS : I think it was mostly just a tool to see Waverly’s outlook on relationships, yeah, how she, y'know, she’s technically available, and she’s technically down to party, y'know, but she’s still very closed off, and the quickest way to kind of get to that situation is to see how she is with Rosita, and how their relationship is.

DARKWICCAN : Y'know, I love how you have approached relationships in this story. I think that every relationship you’ve captured has been absolutely realistic, and true to life, which I think’s pretty awesome. And I also think it’s really great for younger readers, who click on it just because it’s rated M, right? [laughter] But then here they are getting this realistic representation of what adult relationships, or immature to mature adult relationships, sort of look like. What they look like in reality, because I think there’s a lot of, y'know –

DELAYNE : How messy they get.

DARKWICCAN : - fairytale. Yeah, how messy they can get, yeah. But how still, ultimately, they can work out, y'know.

BOOTS : ‘Cause even if someone is your person, y'know, the person that you’re meant to be with, it doesn’t mean that it’s easy all the time. It’s not like “let’s go on a date suddenly we’re, y'know, in love and spending all this time together”. That’s usually not how it works. Even for the gays.

DARKWICCAN : No, yeah, lesbians may have the U-Haul joke, but that’s not necessarily the truth. But speaking of providing realistic representation of relationships between adults, you didn’t really sugar coat anything there, I also like how you didn’t sugar coat anything about Nicole’s experiences in Vietnam, or her return to the States, after being medically discharged. Y'know, the very real difficulty she has, y'know, getting back into normal life, y'know, after this intense, and violent, and terrifying experience that she’s had, and how it has scarred her, y'know.

We call it PTSD now, back then it was called shell-shock, and I think that you did a terrific, terrific job of capturing that. What sort of research did you do to prepare yourself for writing theses sequences, both in Vietnam, and then once she returns?

BOOTS : I read a lot of articles. I started out by reading about Army nurse experience in particular, which there actually isn’t a whole lot on, which I found disappointing, and I found out that the government didn’t really keep track of them. They still aren’t entirely sure even how many went over, or anything like that. They really didn’t seem to care, especially when they came back.

So, I read – I searched a lot, and then I found a good number of articles that talked about the experience from training, to when you were over there, and particularly I read some firsthand accounts of Army nurses that were over there, what it was like to, y'know, live in this constant fear, not just from the enemy, and bullets, and everything around you, but other soldiers, your fellow Americans that were over there with them, they have – that was probably a lot of the issues that they had, actually, was with other soldiers, and stuff like that. And it’s just really heartbreaking to read all this stuff.

And I actually, I did very minimal, not minimal research, on PTSD, but comparatively, it was pretty minimal, because after reading all of that stuff I pretty much had an idea of how it would be, to come back after that. And, y'know, having a general knowledge of PTSD to begin with, and PTSD and depression, and all that good stuff that we love. It really, after reading their accounts, and just reading all of the horrible stuff that they had to put up with, it really, unfortunately wasn’t hard to write all of that. It – I pretty much felt it all.

It sounds a little dumb, probably, but I really felt everything that they felt. Obviously not to the same extent, I could never imagine actually experiencing something like that, and I’m not going to pretend that I will ever experience anything close to that, but, y'know, you get a pretty good idea.

DARKWICCAN : You can empathize.

BOOTS : Yeah.

DELAYNE : And you portrayed it well, ‘cause I still wanna say you’re a jerk, thanks for making me cry.

BOOTS : I don’t mean to, I really don’t mean to. I don’t write something thinking, “I’m gonna make so many people cry right now”. I just, it’s an unfortunate by-product.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, well, I think we have grilled you enough for one day, Boots.

BOOTS : Thank you. I feel nice and toasty now, it’s good.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Excellent.

BOOTS : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : But before we let you go, we let you off the hook last week, we can’t let you off the hook this week. So I guess, y'know, if you’re all toasty on one side, we’re just gonna flip you over.

[laughter]

BOOTS : Perfect.

DARKWICCAN : And come at you with our final question, which I’m going to hand over to Delayne.

DELAYNE : Alright, Boots, you are stranded on a desert island, and can have only one fanfic to read. What is it?

BOOTS : ‘Selling Acid Was a Bad Idea’, by brogurt.

DARKWICCAN : So what is it about this piece that you really like?

BOOTS : I dunno, I think I – poor Nicole – I think I just like when Nicole is in a bad place, I guess. But it, I think it’s well written, and like it has the right amount of angst, and fluff, and a little bit of dirty things thrown in there that I know, if I was stuck on a desert island, I’d have a little bit of everything, I could go through and find what I was in the mood for that time.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so ‘Selling Acid Was a Bad Idea’, by brogurt. And we’ll be sure to have a link to that fic in the show notes, so that our listeners can also give it a try if they haven’t already. They can experiment with acid. I’m kidding! No, don’t experiment with acid.

[laughter] DELAYNE : Disclaimer: don’t do drugs, please.

DARKWICCAN : Don’t do drugs, don’t do drugs, just say no. Just say no to drugs. [laughter] On that note, we’re gonna let you go, Boots, thank you so much for coming back on the show this week, we have had so much fun talking with you.

BOOTS : Of course, thank you for having me again, after the first time I was shocked and surprised, but delighted.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] That’s exactly how we like to catch our writers. Shocked, surprised, and delighted.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for joining us. Tremendous thanks to Bootzncatz for once again coming on the show, this time to discuss her story ‘Wishin and Hopin'’. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Two Worlds by Maru Tang; Theme from A Summer Place by Percy Faith and His Orchestra and; Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast


	17. Baby, Come Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week DW and Delayne talk about their favorite fic that "hurts so good": 'The Memories That Remain' by Haughtbreaker and Jaybear1701 and then sit down with the authors to find out what went into making this angsty masterpiece.

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/baby-come-back)

 

Read the Fic! 

[The Memories That Remain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10954011) by Haughtbreaker and Jaybear1701

 

 

Haughtbreaker's 'Desert Island Fic': '[Unnamed Story](http://www.academyofbards.org/halloween/tn_christmaswithblood.html)' by T.Novan

Jaybear1701's 'Desert Island Fic': '[Just One of the Wiccans](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2573933)' by dreiser

 

Episode Artwork includes a WayHaught portrait (framed) by artist [Chantal](http://youareavision.tumblr.com/).

 

Transcript for the Deaf and HOH by FlyingFanatic!

 

EFA Episode 17 - Baby Come Back

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me, as always, is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And this week we are doing something we haven’t done in a while, Delayne, do you know what that is?

DELAYNE : Would it be a discussing only one fic?

DARKWICCAN : Bingo! Bang on the nose.

DELAYNE : [laughter] It surprised me too.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, exactly. You’re going through the schedule, and you’re like, “oh, I only have to read one fic this week, yay”. Yeah, we haven’t only talked about a single fic in an episode for a little while, here, so this is a bit of a treat. And it should clue you into the fact that we felt that this fic deserved the full focus of an episode.

DELAYNE : Indeed, because it is epic.

DARKWICCAN : This is one of those fics that sticks with you, in the best way. It kinda came outta nowhere for me. I actually read the description and at first I was like, “I think I’ll come back to this one. Because I honestly, it was pretty early on in the Wayhaught, in the existence of Wayhaught, that – it was only like season one, right? A little after season one when this story was posted initially?

DELAYNE : Published 5/20.

DARKWICCAN : So yeah, before season, yeah, they started posting it before the beginning of season two. So still kind of new, right, Wayhaught was still kind of new thing, and I, personally, when I read the summary, I was like “I feel like this relationship is too new to take this sort of a daring leap of speculation in the writing process”. I felt it was, the characters were too new to kind of take the leap that these two authors took, so I set it aside, for a little while. And then I kept hearing, “gosh, it’s a great, oh man, this, you gotta read it, it’s amazing” and then I was like “okay, alright, fine”. And I’m glad I finally read it, because it is become one of my all time favorites.

DELAYNE : Whereas I had paused on reading it for a different reason. I tend to skip over OCs.

DARKWICCAN : That’s right, there are quite a few original characters in this particular fic. And again, I also, that gave me pause, it was like, can we support this many original characters. Yeah, it was a, I’m rambling. Yeah, I agree with you.

DELAYNE : Right, yeah, that tends to give me pause because I remember when I first started writing and, generally, the original character is a Mary Sue, and it just does make for the best fic, sometimes. But I finally, I think upon seeing everyone else talk about it as well, I decided, “okay, let’s give this a try” and oh, my goodness.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and the lead character is absolutely not a Mary Sue in any way or shape. So shall we reveal the title of this fic that we’ve been sort of vaguely referring to up to this point?

DELAYNE : Yes, let’s go ahead and tell them

DARKWICCAN : Alright. So the fic that we are discussing all by itself this week is the ‘Memories that Remain’ by HaughtBreaker and jaybear1701.

DELAYNE : So this is a _Mamma Mia_ AU.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : You know, I know that, I know that that’s what it is, I get that, but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels smarter than a _Mamma Mia_ AU.

DELAYNE : Well, you know theatre, and musical theatre, much more than I do, so, I mean, I’ve seen the movie. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : The movie’s pretty accurate to the stage show.

DELAYNE : Okay, but, yeah, I mean just that basic premise, I guess, is what we’re working with –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : - here, in that a kid with, who was raised by her single mother, is trying to make her mom happy, I guess. I don’t know [laughter] how to word that.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, she’s trying to reunite her mom with the love of her life –

DELAYNE : There we go.

DARKWICCAN : - and of course, yeah, in this instance we know that the love of Waverly Earp – well, first of all, the character, the original character, is Whitney Earp, and that’s Waverly Earp’s daughter. She is twenty years old, and I getting married in a few days, and in the process of going through, and preparing for the wedding, and going through things in the attic, she found a box labeled “Do Not Ever Open Again.” [laughter] Which, I love how it’s like, well that’s like putting a giant red button in front of you, and saying, “Don’t touch it” which, of course, makes me immediately think of _Space Madness_ , and Ren and Stimpy, and the beautiful, red, candy-like button. [laughter] But, anyway, anyway. So, in the process of going through this box that she was not supposed to open, she discovered her mother’s diary, and discovered that, while Waverly was her birth mom, that her genetic mom was Nicole, this woman Nicole. So…

DELAYNE : As well as some other scenes that someone would not want to read about their mother. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. Apparently this diary was rated NC-17. So, unlike _Mamma Mia_ , where the premise is that the daughter is trying to figure out who her father is, and in the process reunite her mother with whoever her father is, the question could be up to three people. Well, obviously that’s not gonna work [laughter]  when it comes to lesbians. ‘Cause parentage is pretty clear. [laughter] You know, clearly defined, so luckily we don’t have to deal with that premise of three potential lesbian moms.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : I’m trying to picture how that would work, and that is just – my brain is rejecting that.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, exactly, yeah, me too. I just get a big, you know, one of those red signs, y'know, “wah, wah, wah”, y'know, in a kind of, nope, rejected. So that’s essentially the premise, is that Whitney Earp has invited Nicole Haught to her wedding, but the invitation she sent to Nicole was written as though it was from Waverly. So Whitney is playing quite a game here between both of her parents, in an attempt to try to get them to talk to each other. So that’s the premise, and it sounds really kind of funny and cute, and it is very funny at times, the writing is excellent, and quite humorous at times, but ultimately this is serious business of the heart.

DELAYNE : Heavy, heavy feels. Yeah. Heavy.

DARKWICCAN : Heavy feels. I gotta admit, there were some parts of this that were kinda hard for me to read, because they hit really, y'know, they hit me, they hit me deep. They cut me deep, Delayne!

DELAYNE : Ah, yeah, I understand, friend, I get you, I feel you.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : There was definitely lots of teary-eyed moments, like I should not be reading this right now. Augh, gosh, it just… [laughter] I guess HaughtBreaker is heart-breaker, man, this..

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, yeah, with their accomplished JayBear, for sure. And, so, you might wonder, okay, so Whitney is trying to get her parents back together, after they haven’t spoken to each other in what we understand to be the equivalent of Whitney’s age, so twenty years. So the question is what on earth could drive Nicole and Waverly apart?

DELAYNE : What happened? And, of course, it’s not like “boom, here’s what happened”. No, we get to re-live it slowly through some fantastic flashbacks, that are even more heartbreaking as we go along.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. They just get increasingly gut-punchy as you get further in, to the point where it’s just like HaughtBreaker and Jay are just like, “I’m just going to reach into your chest and pull out you heart, and show it to you, beating in front of your face”.

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So shall we explain what happens? What happened?

DELAYNE : What happened is one of your favorite things to point out, about what constitutes a good relationship, is communication. And this, we have miscommunication, and just tons and tons of things going wrong. Plus a little side of some evil that kind of helps that miscommunication spread, but –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, well, I mean, the other question is, alright, so, again, knowing the premise of this, we’ve got a kid who’s trying to get her parents back together. One of the conceits here is that Nicole doesn’t know she has a kid. And so there’s the other thing, like wait a minute, how on earth could Nicole not know that she had a kid with Waverly?

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : And that all –

DELAYNE : Because that generally doesn’t happen with lesbians.

DARKWICCAN : No, no, again, it just doesn’t happen. So they’ve come up with, HaughtBreaker and jaybear have come up with a pretty believable scenario. So, as we mentioned, Waverly is the birth mom, but Nicole’s the genetic parent, and that is because it is Nicole’s egg. They gloss over the fact that there is an anonymous donor for the male part of things. [laughter] Which is fine, ‘cause that’s again –

DELAYNE : Chosen from a screen on a computer.

DARKWICCAN : Exactly. So, no involvement there, no meaning there. So if you haven’t guessed yet, Waverly and Nicole were trying to get pregnant. And they were using IVF, that’s the only way that you can do a situation where a female partner can provide donor material, y'know, to their wife, or spouse, or fiancée, or girlfriend, or whatever. And so obviously they were in this together.

Well, as happens, there were failures, and that’s really sad, and really hard, and on top of that there was pressure from Nicole’s family, that they weren’t pleased with the fact that this is a decision, a road that Nicole had decided to go down with Waverly. So we’ve got a lot of stuff at play here. And when two people are trying to get pregnant, and they have failures, it can cause a breakdown in communication. And that’s what we have.

DELAYNE : Yes, which causes a fight, multiple –

DARKWICCAN : But then causes a big blow out, which turns into a “let’s take a break”, which then, thanks to further mis-communication becomes a “I’m done with you”.

DELAYNE : Permanent.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, a permanent break. And, oh, my gosh.

DELAYNE : Ugh. Like, this fic just…ugh. Like I don’t even have proper words for it.

DARKWICCAN : It just cuts you to your core, so, I mean, and this all happening in flashbacks, in a series of flashbacks, so you’re not getting it all at once.

DELAYNE : Oh, thank goodness. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, oh, my god, thank goodness. Y'know, the thing that’s really driving the story forward is Whitney’s determination to finagle her moms back together.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Oh, sorry to cut in, but that is one of the funny bits, the dialogue when, y'know, those involved, who know, will say “your momsss’s…uh, gal pal” or, y'know, they start to say –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, uh-huh.

DELAYNE : - they start to moms as in the both of them, and they sort of change it to mom’s person that is here for her. That’s hilarious.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, there’s a lot of great word play, a lot of great kind of stammering, and trying to, y'know, avoid giving away the game, and I think you had mentioned one of my favorite exchanges, when Whitney is talking to Wynonna, ‘cause Wynonna’s in on it, of course.

DELAYNE : Of course. We’re talking about the “wanna help me Parent Trap my moms”?

DARKWICCAN : That’s the one.

DELAYNE : That line was great. ‘Cause the line before it was, “okay, but in a musical there would be a happy ending”, so, y'know, shout out to your own fic, and story idea. Hey, this is a musical, there’s a happy ending.

DARKWICCAN : Y'know, and again, coming, circling back around to – well, also, it’s Wayhaught, so.

DELAYNE : Right! [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : The odds of it not being a happy ending are pretty slim. Not to say that there aren’t fics out there where things end poorly, or sadly, but there are say, maybe three percent. If that, I think that’s a generous, generous estimate.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I’d say you’re overestimating there. Fairly sure.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, but, y'know, the funny thing is that I didn’t realize that this was a _Mamma Mia_ premise until months after I read it originally.

DELAYNE : Really? ‘Cause that was like, that’s in there, in the tags, did you just not read the tags?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I typically, I typically don’t read the tags, unless something’s in bold, I typically don’t read the tags. I prefer –

DELAYNE : You like to be surprised.

DARKWICCAN : I prefer to be – yeah, that’s right –

DELAYNE : That’s why you don’t read the

DARKWICCAN : - exactly, I don’t read notes at the beginning, either. Yeah, I don’t read tags, and I don’t read notes, unless there is something in bold. And I, y'know, and this is one where I had read this before the podcast was even a glint in the milkman’s eye. And so –

[laughter]

DELAYNE : The plumbers. Shout out to the fic.

DARKWICCAN : The plumber, yeah.

DELAYNE : The plumber!

DARKWICCAN : Shout out the wedge in the plumber’s eye. [laughter] Yes, there is a rather strange plumbing motif that occurs, thanks to Wynonna. Anyway, but yeah, because, y'know, it wasn’t since where I was on the Twitter stream, and making, y'know, consistent recommendations where I won’t recommend something unless: a) I’ve read it, from stem to stern; and b) I double-check the tags, y'know, to make sure.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Nothing in there that, y'know. So, yeah, because of that – this is just when I was reading fics for fun and carefree entertainment.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Ah, remember those days.

DARKWICCAN : Well I still enjoy reading fic. If I didn’t, we wouldn’t have this show. [laughter]

DELAYNE : True, true.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. But yeah, so when I read the fic originally I didn’t realize it was a _Mamma Mia_ AU, and it actually wasn’t until I was re-reading it for the purpose of this episode that we’re recording, that I realized it was a _Mamma Mia_ AU, ‘cause I read the tags this time, and I went, “oh! That makes a strange sort of sense”. But at the same time, like I said, it doesn’t feel like a _Mamma Mia_ AU, it just doesn’t. And I think I have to say thank you, thank you, thank you, to Haughtbreaker and jaybear, for not making it feel like a _Mamma Mia_ AU. Thank you so much, you have no idea how grateful I am. Because I hate that show. [laughter] Yeah, cannot stand it. [laughter] Absolutely cannot stand it, so the fact is I’m so grateful that I didn’t realize it was a _Mamma Mia_ AU, and I am extra grateful that it is unrecognizable as a _Mamma Mia_ AU.

DELAYNE : [crying with laughter] ‘Cause if you had read the tags you definitely would have been like, “Ugh, I’m not even gonna bother”.

DARKWICCAN : I was already, like, I was already, y'know, hesitant because of the fact that it was such a future set fic, that we had a lot of original characters, I was already iffy, y'know, so when I was convinced to read it by all the people praising it to high heavens, I just dove in and read it, I didn’t bother with the tags, and I’m glad.

DELAYNE : That was a goo thing. Oh, my gosh, that was so funny. [laughter] I’m gonna be laughing about that for a while.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] But, yeah, so what – I know what stuck with me the most in this fic, but what really stuck with you?

DELAYNE : Gosh, I just love so many things about this fic. We can talk about how well they used not only all of the characters, but all of their children, and of course how they’re all like related.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I thought it was pretty funny where for a minute and a half, Nicole was convinced that Whitney was in fact Champ’s daughter, and oddly getting married to Champ’s son.

DELAYNE : [laughter] That resulted in a really funny scene when Nicole gets to meet, she meets Whitney for breakfast, and Whitney brings Jesse along, and he’s like “oh my god, my dad’s over there”, and is all hiding his face. And she’s like, “wait a minute, if you’re Champ’s daughter, and he is Champ’s son, like I know this is a small town, but Jesus.”

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Yeah. And of course, of course, they clarify really quickly. But that was a really funny momentary miscommunication there.

DELAYNE : Yes, and then of course it explains why she would think that, which is one of those heartbreaking moments where you’re like, “Oh, man, it could have been all cleared up.”

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : But she had to witness that.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and not only that, but up until that moment, Whitney was under the assumption that Nicole knew that she was her daughter,. And that is the moment where she realizes that Nicole had no idea, and it does two things. One, it exonerates Nicole of being a bad parent, and ditching Waverly while she was pregnant. And two, it makes things that much more complicated for Whitney to try to get the two of them to talk to each other. [laughter]

DELAYNE : So, so much miscommunication, and misunderstanding, and just inconvenient happenings all throughout this fic. It is beautifully woven, amazing how it all fits together, and works, and, I mean just everything has been stacked against poor Nicole and Waverly the entire twenty years, so…

DARKWICCAN : I think we need to talk about that thing with the bad hair.

DELAYNE : [laughter] You think it’s time?

DARKWICCAN : I think it’s time. That –

DELAYNE : Fuck Becky. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : - bitch. I – oh, my, god. It’s one of those things where if I didn’t know for myself, unfortunately, that people like her actually do exist, I would think this person can’t possibly be real, because they are so evil, that they lack any shred of common decency at all. Like, there is nothing about her that is redeeming.

DELAYNE : Absolutely nothing. [laughter] And when Wynonna informs Whitney that she does have another aunt: “Your Aunt Becky is a –“. And she starts to use a certain c-word, but then stops herself. D

DARKWICCAN : Uh-huh.

DELAYNE : Yeah, that’s accurate. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : That is an accurate description, and yeah, I just – and the thing is, is that it was like she didn’t even have anything, really, to gain.

DELAYNE : No.

DARKWICCAN : By ruining Nicole’s life. That’s the other thing. Typically, a villain is doing something because it will benefit them, personally. And if anything, it actually made her life a little worse, because Nicole was the golden child. So, when Nicole went back home after leaving Waverly, y'know, she got everything that Becky had been striving for. So it’s like, but she wouldn’t have been home if Becky had – oh my god, this woman, I hate her.

DELAYNE : Yeah, when I read that, ‘cause that was between Becky and Nicole about, y'know, “I’ve been working so hard to move up in the company and like you just step in, and you’re here, and you’ve taken over, and the parents love you”.

DARKWICCAN : “You got the corner office on the –“

DELAYNE : And it’s like, why? Why would you? Now, I don’t have sisters, I have brothers, they can be mean in, I think, different ways than sisters can, generally, so I can’t even comprehend. ‘Cause my brothers are assholes to me, when they call me that golden child, so.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm.

DELAYNE : But not an asshole in that way.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, but again, it’s like, her motive, I’ve no idea what her motives are beyond just she wants Nicole to be unhappy. And that doesn’t benefit her. So, again, she has no redeeming qualities. Typically, with a villain, they have something where they feel what they’re doing is the right thing, and it’s usually, it’s the right things because, again, as I’ve said before, we’re Department of Redundancy Department [sic], it’s the right thing because it benefits them in some way. In some way, it doesn’t have to be a direct benefit, it can be an indirect benefit, but somehow it’s benefitting them. And so –

DELAYNE : I think you’re right, I think her motivation is just to make the golden child unhappy.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So, yeah.

DELAYNE : Even to her own detriment.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and it’s like, where did this – where did the inspiration for this character come from, like I wanna ask Haughtbreaker and jay, “Hey, did somebody hurt you? Like, is this based on someone you know, or knew, or I am so sorry”, y'know? [laughter] Because yeah, she’s just vile, she’s absolutely vile. I mean, she does sort of get her comeuppance in the end, not to the degree that I would have liked. So, yeah, I just wanna ask them, “Where did this character come from?” and I have other questions too, that I wanna address. They clearly did quite a lot of research about medical stuff, and also supernatural holiday demons, and, that we hadn’t really talked about, and

DELAYNE : Right? The supernatural did, y'know, I was picturing some fluffy fic that, y'know, the end result, of course, would be Waverly and Nicole getting together, and then, oh, this little supernatural element starts sneaking in.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : Somewhere around the middle, and we’re like, “whoa”.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, cool, ride on, yeah. So I have questions for them about that, and I’m sure you do to.

DELAYNE : Oh, I have many questions.

DARKWICCAN : So how lucky that we were able to convince them to sit down and chat with us about this fic today?

DELAYNE : How lucky, indeed, that you take the time to hunt down and force these people to come talk –

DARKWICCAN : I beg your pardon!

DELAYNE : - to us. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : I have never forced anyone to come on this show. Not a single person. Not one. I may have negotiated, but I certainly never force anyone. Good heavens.

DELAYNE : Well – [laughter] okay. Let me re-word that. I am grateful that you ask, and they seem to be willing, ‘cause it still blows my mind that people wanna talk to us about their fics.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, that’s better.

DELAYNE : Okay?

DARKWICCAN : That’s – okay.

DELAYNE : Was that better? [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : But before we can sit down to our interview with Haughtbreaker and jaybear1701, we have to do the thing we always do, and introduce this week’s [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Soulsucker Blues by Ryan Ike

DARKWICCAN : And welcome back  everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my cohost:

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we are delighted to have joining us today the two authors of the fic that we were discussing in the first segment,  the ‘Memories that Remain’, HaughtBreaker and jaybear1701, who we will call Nic and Jay respectively. Welcome to the show you two.

JAY : Hi.

NIC : Howdy.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] It is such a pleasure having you guys join us today. Thank you so much for making time.

JAY : Thanks for inviting us, we’re honored.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Always, we can always have you on next week though, you know what I’m saying?

JAY : You can always have me – yes.

DARKWICCAN : Oh great, okay, so now we’ve a fourth host.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Can we have Beebo? That’s the next question, can we have Beebo?

DARKWICCAN : No Beebo – as awesome as that would be, I have to say, now wait a minute, Beebo isn’t _Wynonna Earp_ related.

JAY : It might be.

DARKWICCAN : Eventually, if they ever do that crossover.

JAY : Beebo throwing at Revenants.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh!

DELAYNE : Oh wow, there’s going to be some really weird fanfiction created after this.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. So, speaking of fanfiction, how did you both get into writing fanfic? Jay, why don’t we start with you?

JAY : How did I get into writing fanfic? I first started writing _Sailor Moon_ fanfic, I’m gonna date myself here, I’m like a thousand years ago, and I never finished that. And I think it just stemmed from wanting to see representation that I didn’t see on T.V., or movies, any kind of media, and think fanfic was a method to see that representation, all those authors, reading their work and being inspired and then trying to write it myself, so that’s how I got into it.

DARKWICCAN : Nice. And Nic, what about you?

NIC : Well I think this is one of the things in which Jay and I bonded over, is that my first fanfic experience was _Sailor Moon_ fanfic. [laughter] And then –

JAY : But you also wrote for _Xena_.

NIC : Yeah, but see, _Sailor Moon_ came first. So it was the first time –

JAY : That is true.

NIC : - I read was _Sailor_ , but the first time I wrote fanfic was _Xena_ , and then the first time I published it, like not published it but actually put it available for people to read was with _Orphan Black_.

JAY : That’s right. Actually, little known fact: Nic is the one who inspired me to write _Orphan Black_ fanfic. Because I read her story, ‘Village Secrets’, which was a Olympics, Winter Olympics AU, and I was like “this is just amazing, I want do it [32:25]” that’s how we kind of met. And it’s been a lovely friendship ever since.

DARKWICCAN : Aw, that’s so sweet.

NIC : And here’s your five dollars, Jay.

DARKWICCAN : Nice. [laughter]

JAY : Thank you!

DELAYNE : Speaking of Nic inspiring you to write, now my question is what made you decide to work together on this, and, y'know, how did you split up those duties?

JAY : Okay, so, we actually had collab’d on a different _Wynonna Earp_ fic earlier, called ‘Like a Boomerang’, which was kind of our take post season two, and Nic helped me out with that so I said, “y'know, Nic, I will help you out with a story idea”. [laughter] So you have, and so I’ll let Nic, y'know, talk about her inspiration, but basically Nic was the show runner on this story. So this is all her fault, and basically did what I was told, yeah. So Nic is gonna try to throw me under the bus, or something, but this is all her idea. So take it away, Nic.

NIC : It is, it’s very true, it’s like instead of exchanging sexual favors, we exchange fic favors.

[laughter]

JAY : That’s so true.

NIC : I have this really, really bad habit, it’s like any time that I’m watching like T.V., or a movie, I’m like “this would be such better if it were gay”. So one day I was watching –

DARKWICCAN : I think a lot of us can agree with you there, Nic.

NIC : So it’s like, one day I was watching _Mamma Mia_ , ‘cause that’s what I do, y'know. And then my brain was lie “y'know what? This movie is super cute, it’s light and fluffy, you know who’s also super cute, and light, and fluffy? Wayhaught.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : That is true, Wayhaught is light and fluffy, absolutely.

NIC : It totally is, and y'know I was like, “I really don’t feel like writing another chaptered fic right now, maybe I could find someone else who will write it with me”. And you know who writes awesome with me, because we’re like completely drift compatible? Is Jay.

JAY : We are, yeah.

NIC : Jay loves fic about estranged couples, because she’s sadistic. [laughter] She’s like “what, Wayhaught hasn’t been together for twenty years? I’m there”. But unfortunately –

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : That’s all you had to say, “they had a terrible break up, they haven’t been together for twenty years”, and Jay was like, “Sign me up!”

NIC : And unfortunately –

JAY : Yeah.

NIC : - Jay also likes angst.

JAY : So, so true. It’s so true.

DARKWICCAN : Y'know, you guys did a really terrific job with the angst in this story.

DELAYNE : Oh, my god.

DARKWICCAN : Let me tell you, man.

NIC : Oh, thank you.

DARKWICCAN : You really, oh, god, there were moments that my chest was just squeezing in pain, like, the whole y'know premise of why they’re not together. Y'know you both, you captured the emotional drain, and the frustration of failed IVF attempts with such god devastating perfection. What sort of research went into, not only the technicalities of medical processes, but also like the psychological and the emotional strain?

NIC : It’s all yours, Jay.

JAY : So, I can answer that. So, this – we didn’t actually have to do much research, because my wife and I actually went through the IVF process about, I’d say about five and a half years ago. So I knew all about just kind of like, the kind of total freak-out you get when you, y'know, decide, hey, maybe we wanna start this, and then, y'know, all the testing, and the shots, and the medicine, and y'know, it’s just very nerve-wracking. So a lot of MTR was kind of me channeling all of that into the story.

DARKWICCAN : Was it a kind of a catharsis for you, or…?

JAY : Yeah, definitely, definitely. I actually joked about, to Nic, that some of Waverly and Nicole’s arguments kind of mirrored some of my arguments with my wife, and I said to her, y'know, “I hope [her name’s Ashley] I hope you never–“

DARKWICCAN : You hope her name’s Ashley? I hope her name’s Ashley too. I just, you said “I hope her name’s Ashley”, so I was like, “well I hope her name’s Ashley too.”

[laughter]

JAY : Oh, sorry, sorry, no, no, no. I meant to say “I hope Ashley never reads this” because she’s gonna be like, “Oh, my god!” But –

DELAYNE : Yeah, my wife doesn’t, yeah. Just don’t read anything, please. [laughter]

JAY : No, so.

DELAYNE : Ever.

JAY : Basically, we had a happy ending, y'know, we actually got two twin boys on the first shot, but, y'know, I just kinda remembered the fear, and the anxiety, and just kinda tried to channel it through that.

DARKWICCAN : Well congratulations on your boys, that’s fantastic.

JAY : Thank you.

DELAYNE : And congratulation s on writing a very real, and very heartbreaking story.

JAY : Oh, thank you too. I’m not sitting here like Emperor Palpatine, like, “yes”

[laughter]

DELAYNE : There was so much miscommunication and misunderstanding in this fic. Was it hard to keep track of it all?

NIC : Okay, well Jay had like the best outlining skills, like, in the world. [laughter] Like, she writes these really detailed notes about everything, and like bullet points, and numbers, and then I comment “lol, fuck off Jay”.

[laughter]

JAY : That’s true. I can send you screenshots.

DARKWICCAN : So, Nic, you basically like to just undo all of the prep work that Jay has done, is that what you’re saying, or…?

[laughter]

NIC : That’s my one function.

DARKWICCAN : So, Jay, you have outlines that are pretty detailed and kind of keep track of where all these misunderstanding come into play?

JAY : Yeah, Nic has this amzing ability to just kind of write off the cuff, and y'know, the stories kind of take shape that way, but I need structure. [laughter] I need to know where I’m going, but I think, especially with a collab, it was very important so that we both knew what we were writing. So we’d have a chapter, and we have, y'know, we usually had almost, we would usually have Waverly, Wynonna, and Nicole, and a Whitney’s point of view in each chapter, and we’d just divvy them up. So every chapter will be – I won’t say it’s evenly split, fifty-fifty, but it’s about fifty-fifty. I feel like Nic wte way more in the beginning, because she took almost all of the Waverly, Wynonna, and Whitney point of views, and I just primarily stuck to Nicole, and so until about, I dunno, five or six chapters in, and then we kinda, I felt more comfortable writing Whitney, and I felt more comfortable writing Waverly. But I did wanna say that Nic wrote every single one the Wynonna point of views, because Nic is hilarious. [laughter] Y'know, like, she is –

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

JAY : Wynonna lives in her. So all the y'know, funny kind of scenes with Wynonna, and the Wynonna dialogue, that’s all Nic, and I’m just always amazed. So, but yeah, so it wasn’t hard to keep things, keep track of things, just because we had the outline, and so. But I will say Nic says it’s all detailed, but I pulled it up and it’s about twenty-five hundred words, ten pages or so, yeah, ten pages, so chapter eleven, which I think was the big, y'know, Nicole and Waverly kinda get back together, y'know, for that one night. And so this is how detailed, this is how detailed the outline is: “Eleven. New chapter. A) Nicole confronts Waverly about Whitney. 1) Big fight. 2) Angst tears. [laughter] 3) Reveal Nicole’s sister was a bleep bleep”. So it’s not that detailed. [laughter] But we know the – a road map.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, you have road signs, at least, you have road signs, at least. And, y'know, speaking of all of these misunderstandings that had to happen in order for this story to work, really, I have to wonder if there moments where you felt as authors that Waverly should have tried harder to get the information of Whitney’s, both existence and progeny, to Nicole? Did you ever find yourself frustrated in dealing with both Nicole and Waverly’s, y'know, individual stubbornness?

[laughter]

NIC : Frustrated? No way, I mean, we’re like the writer, are Jay is sustained by [38:20] so… [laughter] I’m like, okay, I wanna write a smut scene, and Jay’s all like “but how do we make it hurt?”

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : “Please, how do we make this smut scene hurt people?” That’s horrible!

NIC : That’s kind of like how we write, it’s like, y'know, we’ll be having discussions, most of our discussions happen in our chat, and we’ll be like writing all the repercussions of the break-up, and why didn’t she do this, why didn’t she do this, and then every time one of those questions came up, we’d think of a reason, y'know, that would explain it. So, it was like, the constant calls, the fact that Nicole would have –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

NIC : - her Canadian phone shut off once she’s in the U.S., y'know. Wynonna going to, trying to see Nicole, but being stopped by Dolls, so it was like, we try to come with these situations that are like, y'know, she had to have done this, because of who Nicole is, we know that she would go back to Purgatory even if she wasn’t able to reach it, which is why we introduced that scene between Waverly and Champ, out in public, so.

DARKWICCAN : Right, yeah, that was – I tell you what, initially reading this story for the first time, months, and months, and months ago, when it got to that scene I was like “isawaffuguhyah? [intentional verbal keysmash]” I was very much like “wuddah, whuddyassh meh? Wait, who? What is happening right now?” [laughter] There was that moment of doubt, and I totally understood what Nicole was thinking, ‘cause there was that moment of “that seems unlikely”, but with the evidence that she has been presented with is very compelling.

NIC : There a lot of people that were like –

JAY : Yes, yes.

NIC : - angry at the things that we were writing. Like, Jay would go into like the l-chat boards, which I would never to do, because all it is, is a lot of –

JAY : Yeah.

NIC : - people who get together and they complain about fanfic.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, l-chat is horrible.

JAY : It’s true.

DARKWICCAN : There are just some people, yeah, ooh, don’t get me started. I’ve been on l-chat three times, and I regret every single time I’ve gone in there.

NIC : Oh, yeah. They really do a number on your confidence.

JAY : But it’s like they don’t realize that, y'know, a reader, you know things that the characters don’t know, so Waverly doesn’t know what, y'know, Nicole knows, and Nicole doesn’t know what Waverly knows, y'know?

DARKWICCAN : Right, yeah. And it’s up to us, the readers on the outside, y'know, rending our clothing and pulling our hair out. [laughter] Talk to each other, dammit! Y'know? [laughter]

JAY : I think it was a little more difficult to come up with reasons why neither of them just kind of blurted out truth in present time, so I think that was a little harder. Also, to keep Wynonna and Whitney from just outright saying, “Hey, guess what?” So.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. Well I think that, it seemed like you had Waverly just locked in anger ball mode for a good chunk of the present -

DELAYNE : That’s a good description -

DARKWICCAN : - tense.

DELAYNE : - anger ball mode. [laughter]

NIC : Yes, true. Accurate.

DARKWICCAN : But, y'know, as a result, it was easy for her to not get to the point, because she was just, she had that wall of anger as kind of armor, in place.

JAY : But it’s like I feel like that’s -

NIC : Oh, that’s true.

JAY : - very like canon Waverly anyway, ‘cause it’s like, I mean, we don’t see that much in season two, but like in season one, y'know, you see that like Waverly’s been hurt by everyone leaving her. Like, her mother, like her dad didn’t care about her, Willa disappeared, y'know, and then Wynonna picks up and leaves. And when Wynonna comes back, like, Waverly is outwardly happy to see her, but then you find out, like a couple episodes later, it’s like Waverly’s secretly like super pissed at Wynonna, so.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. Ah, that famous mirror, mirror – I can’t remember the actual name of it. Yeah, but yeah –

NIC : Blade?

DARKWICCAN : Blade, the Blade episode. Uhwah, uhwah, that was a creepy episode.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Jay, going back to your outline, where Becky is a “bleep bleep”. I want ot know who or what was the inspiration for Becky, ‘cause man, what a character. [laughter]

JAY : I, well, we’d have to credit, I don’t know if you’re familiar with -

NIC : Arabybizarre.

JAY : - how do you pronounce her name? Arabybizarre? Arabybizarre, who also writes some Wayhaught fic, I got plug her.

DARKWICCAN : She’s got a Star Wars fic going right now, yeah.

JAY : Yes! Yes. So araby – her real name’s Mac, or MacKenzie, Mac – and Mac was actually our beta reader for some of the chapters, and when she learned about the sister character she had said something about “Becky with the good hair”. [laughter] And so that became Becky, and just kind like this meddling kinda character, thank you Beyonce. If Nic wants to add anything to that…?

NIC : Usually we do pull a lot of inspiration for characters, like Coleen is in the first chapter, from _Orphan Black_ , the flight attendant was modeled after Zoie Palmer, and… [laughter] But I think with Becky it was just, like she just wanted her modeled after a basic white girl who was just like the biggest antagonist of the story.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, I got it. I got it. So, Delayne, you had something to add?

DELAYNE : [laughter] I happen to know a Becky, and-

JAY : Oh gosh.

DELAYNE : - and she would disagree that this character –

JAY : Apologies.

DELAYNE : - this character should be a Becca. Or a Rebecca, or something else, ‘cause Beckys are cool, and the girls that she went to school with who were Rebeccas that went by not Becky, they were the not cool Beckys.

NIC : Oh, I see.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, gotcha, okay. So according to the Becky that you know, Delayne –

DELAYNE : The Becky that I know –

DARKWICCAN : Beckys are cool, but Beccas are not.

DELAYNE : Yes. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Okay.

NIC : Can I say, you can blame Mac and Beyonce. It wasn’t us!

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, the thing that was, that we talked about, Delayne and I talked about this in segment one, Becky is just completely unredeemable. Like, there are no redeeming characteristics about her, she just –

DELAYNE : Is awful!

DARKWICCAN : She’s just an awful person, and the thing is, is typically with a villain, again, we said this in segment one, typically villains have some sort of end game that benefits them in some capacity. It could be a direct or indirect benefit, but it’s gonna benefit them. But literally everything Becky does to ruin Nicole’s life only makes her own life worse. So can you tell me, either of you, can you tell me what, looking at it through Becky’s eyes, what was her driving factor? Was it just “I want my sister to suffer ‘cause I hate her”, or was there something else going on there?

NIC : I don’t think she was trying to get her to suffer. Like, I think her biggest thing was keeping the family, and like she just comes from a place of privilege that doesn’t y'know believe that her sister, who, y'know, they’re from this big lawyer family, in a big city, there’s no reason that she would ever want to live in like some backwater, y'know, like, place like Purgatory, and trying to hook up with some chick that works in a bar, that wears short shorts, y'know?

DARKWICCAN : So was it coming from a place of misguided protection, almost, or.. ? Like, “Nicole doesn’t know what doesn’t know what’s best for her, so I’m going to do everything I can to get her back in the fold”?

JAY : I think it’s partly, y'know, “I’m the big sister, I know what’s best, and, y'know, you’re not on the path of what I deem is best for the family, and the family name”. I think it’s partly that, and I think it’s also partly, y'know, jealousy, maybe, maybe – I don’t know if we really explored this fully. Maybe she’s jealous of it, of Nicole, that she did find this happiness out in – to Becky – the middle of nowhere, whereas Becky has always been trying to follow in the footsteps of her parents, and y'know doing everything that’s she’s supposed to do, have a corner office, being the big-shot lawyer, making it rain monies. So I think it’s part jealousy, part wanting y'know Nicole to not to shame the family and, y'know, fall in line. But I think we see, at the end, her parents do actually kinda – are still in Nicole’s life in the epilogue.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it – I think it was –

DELAYNE : It was nice to see that.

DARKWICCAN : - it was very nice to see them, it was nice to see them as supporting, y'know, grandparents, and great-grandparents, really, at that point. But I think what really just struck Delayne and I was just how vindictive Becky was about everything that she did. And I think that is the kind of, like, that’s where it becomes unredeemable. It’s one thing if – y'know what I mean, like? And that’s fine, it’s fine for her to be unredeemable, I hate her, she can go away. [laughter] She deserved everything that was coming to her, absolutely. So it made it really easy to like –

DELAYNE : Fuck Becky.

DARKWICCAN : - yeah, F Becky. Yeah, it made it really easy to y'know, have this character that you could really root against, that you could put all of energy into really disliking, that was, y'know, a smart move, a very smart move. Because otherwise, then you just kind of get frustrated with Waverly and Nicole, and their lack of communication, and that breakdown. And it’s like I wanna focus angry energy somewhere, but not at our girls.

[laughter]

NIC : And boy, everyone was angry, like the comments –

JAY : Yeah.

NIC : - I’ve never seen wanna wish someone so much violence in the comments.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : in addition to the mundane threat of Becky with the – well, I’ve been calling her Becky with the bad hair – but Becky with the good hair [laughter] we also had a supernatural threat come into play, the sort of started peaking its little supernatural head in about midway through. We had hints that something odd was afoot about midway through the story, but really came to a head at the actual wedding. So I have to ask: did either of you actually use a thesaurus to come up with the agency name to fit the Krampus acronym? And if so, who was that?

NIC : Can you guess?

DARKWICCAN : I’m gonna guess it was Jay.

JAY : No.

NIC : It was one hundred percent me. [laughter] Here’s where it started, okay. Jay and I want to write a Christmas fic. And it was literally like, like day one or day two of when we were plotting out this Christmas fic. And then we’re like, use Krampus, ‘cause we can’t just have like some weird Santa Clause thing, we wanted Krampus, and I was like, but we wanted it to be different. And Jay was like, “What if Krampus was an organization?” and I was like “oh, my god, hold up”. So, I don’t know if watched _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D_ at all?

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, totally.

NIC : But there’s this joke that they do, like, in the first season, where Maria Hill, who’s played by Cobie Solders, ugh. She asked Ward, and she’s like, “What does S.H.I.E.L.D stand for?” and he’s like, “Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division.” And she’s like, “Well, what does it mean to you?” and he’s like, ‘It means someone really wanted our initials to spell out shield.” [laughter] And that was why, I literally like wrote Krampus down on a piece of paper and I was like, yes, like a real piece of paper, with a pen, and was like, “What’s the most obnoxious title I can think of?” I just started, like K, okay, it’s gonna be in the, y'know, Europe, so we’re going to do “King’s”. It took me like until three o’clock in the morning. And then I was like, “BAM. It’s on the bottom of the outline, and it’s like the last thing that’s gonna come out in the entire story, and it was like found, on like Big Chew.

JAY : Yes, yes, it was one of the first things that went in the outline in like October of, what was it, 2016?

NIC : Yeah. And it took like eighty-four years, and then finally, it was in chapter, whatever.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, man, that’s so funny though, ‘cause it gave you something to work for, right, I mean it took you sitting down with a piece of paper until three in the morning to come up with it, which I think is hilarious. And then it just sat on the back burner, and you’re like “we’re gonna get to this, and it’s gonna be amazing”.

[laughter]

NIC : Exactly. Like Wynonna’s gonna have joke, and it’s gonna be amazing.

JAY : Yes. Yeah.

DELAYNE : The Agent number, and the 867530 line. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, that was hilarious. [laughter] “Agent number 8675309”. That was hilarious.

[laughter]

JAY : That was all Nic.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : That is such a Wynonna thing to – it was so perfect.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : So, if anyone ever needs help writing their Wynonna, ask Nic.

JAY : Oh, Nic. Oh, Nic.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, Nic is the one to call if you’re stuck, for sure, with a Wynonna thing.

JAY : Exactly.

DARKWICCAN : So, before we get to our final question, I do wanna touch a couple things. Are there – this a very leading question, you guys – are there things outside of fanfiction that you do for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom…? Hint, hint.

NIC : I have a store… it’s on etsy, but you can to get to at www dot gal pal stitches dot com, and yeah, it’s spelled exactly how it sounds, but I do like embroidery, so, I do a lot of the patches for Nicole’s cosplay that I see at conventions.

DARKWICCAN : And you did the patches for Kat Barrel’s mom’s cosplay?

NIC : I did, I did, that was a very weird day on my feed.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : That’s just so cool. And as you know, the podcast is a strong supporter of Gal Pal Stitches, we even did a reverse sponsor spot for you a few weeks ago.

NIC : Yes, that’s awesome.

DARKWICCAN : So yeah. How about you, Jay, got any sidelines that you run?

JAY : I don’t, sorry.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Ugh. No, you’ve got two twin boys that you’re trying to take care of, that I think, yeah.

NIC : Jay’s job is to sit at home and write fic for me.

JAY : And I write my name. Yes.

DARKWICCAN : There you go. And what a wonderful job you do, Jay. [laughter] Okay, so, we will actually, you know what, Nic, we’ll include another link to Gal Pal Stitches dot com in our show notes, so that our listeners can once again marvel at your incredible artistry patchwork.

DELAYNE : Did you see the latest stamp? I believe that was on Twitter this morning?

DARKWICCAN : Did you make a stamp?

NIC : I made a stamp today. Like, I went early, bought a stamp maker, like just yesterday morning, first thing I woke up, all I did was check Amazon. And then I bought a stamp maker, and so I just made my first stamp today, that says “I am all in”.

DARKWICCAN : That is so cool! That is really cool.

NIC : It’s with Tim’s actual handwriting, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Ugh, nice. Epic, cool.

JAY : Nic also does those _Wynonna Earp_ pumpkins, I’ve gotta pimp that out, too.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, well, y'know, Nic, I also do _Wynonna Earp_ themed pumpkins, as well, so we’ll have to compare our pumpkins to each other.

[laughter]

NIC : Awesome. Gonna have a pumpkin-off.

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely. Y'know what, how about you send me some pictures of past pumpkins, and we can put those up, and I can put up one of my pumpkins, and we can be like, “Pumpkin Off!” [laughter] Okay, well, enough of that. I think we’ve tarried well enough, time to ask the final question. The question that was ask all of our fic author, and the only one that I consider to be remotely hard ball.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : It’s a difficult question.

DARKWICCAN : It is a difficult question. So, Delayne, do you want to ask it, or shall I?

DELAYNE : I will go ahead. So, you are stranded on a desert island, and can have only one fanfic to read. What is it?

NIC : Okay, so I can really only think of one story, and it’s probably not the best fanfic in the world, considering it was like at the turn of the century. But it’s called ‘T-Novan’s Unnamed Story, aka Christmas With Blood, and Without Gifts or Christ”. It’s a Xena and Gabrielle uber-fic, and, like, the only reason I would say this would be the one, is because it kinda had everything in it, and it’s not one of the fics that made me start writing, but it is the first fic that made me realize what fanfic could be. And that fanfic could be silly, it can be sexy, it can serious, it can be scary, ‘cause it is, it’s like a ghost fic. But there’s like a, there’s this line in it, the Xena character says, “The fantasies I’ve had about her would be illegal in twenty-seven states, and Puerto Rico.” [laughter] That was like the first time I read a fic that I was like, “I am completely in love with this”.

DARKWICCAN : Nice, nice, okay, well it’s ‘T-Novan’s Unnamed Story’?

NIC : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : But of course, we will provide that link in our show notes for our readers to check out, a good old-fashioned Xena/Gabby fic. What about you, Jay?

JAY : So I will take an old Willow and Tara fic from – I wanna say the early 2000s. It’s called ‘Just One of the Wiccans’ by dreiser, and it is basically, if you can imagine an 80s romcom, high school romcom, that is this fic. It is based on the 80s, I don’t know if you’re familiar with ‘Just One of the Guys’?

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

JAY : Okay, so –

DARKWICCAN : I love that movie.

JAY : Yes!

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

JAY : So, in this fic, Willow goes undercover as a boy –

JAY : - or man. A boy.

DARKWICCAN : Boy-man.

JAY : Boy-man! When she doesn’t wins a programming contest, and she ends up falling in love with Tara, and Tara is kind of confused, because she always identified as a lesbian, but here’s this guy, that she’s kinda into. But what I really loved about this fic is that the author, drizer, made every single character from the Buffyverse either gay, or bi, or pan, what have you, and so, back in the early 2000s, when I was still coming out, I was just like, wow, blown away. I was like, wow, everyone can be gay. So I love that fic, it’s very silly, and no, you don’t take it seriously, it’s just fun, and campy, and I love it. Love it love it.

DELAYNE : Was dreiser on the board?

DARKWICCAN : I think dreiser was on the KB, yeah.

JAY : Yeah, maybe, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : But we’ll probably find it like, on mysticmuse, or something like that, I’d bet.

JAY : Probably. I think it’s still on like fanfic dot net. It might be.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, is it?

JAY : I think so.

DARKWICCAN : Cool.

JAY : Yeah. Awesome.

DARKWICCAN : We’ll look it up.

DELAYNE : Like, I don’t think I’ve read that one! I’ve read so much Willow and Tara, but I don’t think I’ve read that one.

NIC : I think Jay and I have really just dated ourselves –

JAY : I know! We’re ancient, we are literally ancient.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I’m gonna check that out, ‘cause seriously, ‘Just One of the Guys’ is one of my all-time favorite 80s movies, and that is amazing, I am so excited.

JAY : You will love it. You will love it.

DELAYNE : Jay, were you ever on the KittenBoard?

JAY : I was! I was. Although I was more of a lurker, I didn’t really post anything, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, well that’s alright, there are plenty of lurkers, there are plenty of lurkers on the board. So, Nic, Jay, thank you so much for coming on and chatting with us today about the ‘Memories That Remain’. It is genuinely one of my favorite fics and, as I mentioned in segment one, it’s a fic I wasn’t even planning on reading, so the fact that I sat down and read it, and it became one of my favorite fics, is like, awesome, to me.

JAY : Cool. Thank you.

NIC : Thank you.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely, and I look forward to seeing whatever you guys come up with next, either as a collaborative team, or as individuals, and I’m sure that we’ll have either both or each of you on again in the future.

NIC : Thank you.

JAY : Awesome, thanks so much.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for joining us. Huge thanks to Haughtbreaker and Jaybear1701 for coming on to talk with about their story. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Vagrant Song (Appalachia) (Guitar Version) and Soulsucker Blues by Ryan Ike; and Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast


	18. I Put a Spell On You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week DarkWiccan teams up with Laragh as they explore the Wizarding World discussing their favorite Hogwarts AU fics! Afterward, they sit down with author EmJayAnders to chat about their fic!

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/i-put-a-spell-on-you)

 

Read the fics!

["Dear Future Self - Hogwarts AU"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12240153) by sscribe

["more than a name"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11237955) by almostafantasia

["I Counted the Stars (and they led to you)"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13114179) by Bootsncatz

["If your Dear Heart is Wounded my Wild Heart Bleeds with Yours"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11596461) by EmJayAnders

 

 

 

EmJay's 'Desert Island Fic': [“when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12019983) by deathrae

 

Transcript for the Deaf and HOH by Flying Fanatic!

 

EFA Episode 18 - I Put a Spell On You

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and this week standing in for Delayne, who could not join us, we have the amazing and wonderful...

LARAGH : Hey, it’s Laragh!

DARKWICCAN : Exactly! And you didn’t screw with me, huzzah. I tricked you into saying that you’re amazing and wonderful, because you are.

LARAGH : Oh, god, I didn’t even realize.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Muwhaha. Muwhaha. Oh, man, it’s exciting to have you back on the show co-hosting with me, Laragh.

LARAGH : Thank you, yeah, it’s nice to be back.

DARKWICCAN : I always enjoy hearing your lovely Irish lilt.

LARAGH : Oh, thank you.

DARKWICCAN : As I work very hard not to mimic it. [laughter]

LARAGH : You should mimic it, it would be funny. [laughter] Just go the entire episode with an Irish accent.

DARKWICCAN : And then I’d go back and listen to it and go, [imitates Irish accent] “Oh, no, what was I doing, to be sure.” [laughter] “I dinnae sound like myself.” [returns to American accent] Alright, okay, alright, let’s get this road trip back on track.

LARAGH : Get to the fanfiction.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. So, are you a fan of _Harry Potter_ , Laragh?

LARAGH : So, I am a _Harry Potter_ fan, but I wouldn’t say that I’m a hardcore _Harry Potter_ fan. Y'know, I can’t recite the books, or anything like that, or the spells, that kind of stuff. But, y'know, I read all the books, I watched all the movies, I went to the midnight release parties, and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, definitely a fan.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, okay, me too, me too, I would say. I read all the books. I actually didn’t start getting into _Harry Potter_ until the fourth book came out.

LARAGH : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : At which point my mom was basically like, “You have to read these, they’re amazing.” And by the time the fourth book came out, I mean, I was an adult, y'know. I mean, I was already an adult when the first book came out, gonna date myself, but it just didn’t seem like, y'know, it didn’t grab my attention right off the bat. So then my mom’s like, “You have to read these books, they’re incredible”, and she gives me her copies of the first four books. And, Laragh, I read them all… in less than three days.

LARAGH : Whoa. That’s intense.

DARKWICCAN : And then I was like, “When is the fifth book coming out?” [laughter]

LARAGH : Wow. That’s – I mean, I definitely was like that as well about the books, but I was a child, so I didn’t quite have the same, maybe, urgency.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, y'know, I kinda ruined it for myself ‘cause I read them so fast, and then I to sit and wait until the fifth book came out. I was like, “Ugh, that was not, I was not thinking ahead”. But the reason why we’re talking about _Harry Potter,_ and the _Harry Potter_ books, is because today we are talking about taking _Harry Potter_ and _Wynonna Earp,_ and just smooshing them together.

LARAGH : Smooshing them together, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Hogwarts alternative universe stories.

LARAGH : Which there are quite a few.

DARKWICCAN : There are quite a few, it’s a very popular crossover –

LARAGH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - or it’s a very popular AU, I should say. Well, both, right? Crossover/AU -

LARAGH : Both.

DARKWICCAN : - within the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom. And I think it’s because, y'know, because – and tell me if you think I’m wrong – y'know, _Wynonna Earp_ is a supernatural show –

LARAGH : Mhm.

DARKWICCAN : - and _Harry Potter_ deals with the supernatural, in a way, so it’s kind of not too farfetched to –

LARAGH : Not too farfetched, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - to, no.

LARAGH : I definitely, with all of the fics that we’re going to talk about, I notice that they were able to kind of fit the _Wynonna Earp_ backstory quite well into the universe that they were writing in.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, they didn’t have any trouble at all, I think you’re exactly right, there. But it seems like the main focus of these stories is almost always Waverly. And then, by extension, Nicole. But really, the focus is typically on Waverly.

LARAGH : Well, Waverly is very studious, and academic, I suppose, that’s what we know of her, so it makes sense that when you put her in, y'know, a school setting, that she would kind of be the main focus point.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Another thing I found is that these kind of feel like high school AUs, just they happen to be at Hogwarts.

LARAGH : Yeah, well they are, I suppose by their very nature they’re high school AUs, aren’t they? Which is kind of interesting because it’s like a high school AU, but on steroids?

DARKWICCAN :[laughter] It is! It is like a high school AU on steroids, because you have all the extra stuff, y'know, magic almost acts as an allegory for teenage hormones.

LARAGH : [laughter] That’s pretty accurate.

DARKWICCAN : So much like we often do when we’re discussing a general theme, in this case Hogwarts AUs, we will select up to four fics that we think sort of epitomize this style, or approach, and that is the same thing here. Now, much like the last time Laragh joined us on the show, when she graciously stepped in for Delayne when she had a conflict, two of the four picks are actually Delayne’s picks. And so that means that Laragh, once again, we gave you a ton of homework prior to this recording.

LARAGH : Yep. Yeah, they gave me like a week’s notice to read 300,000 words worth of fics. [laughter] And I’m like, “Okay!” every time, I’m like “Sure! No problem!”

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Next time you’re gonna check the word count before you agree, huh?

[laughter]

LARAGH : Yeah. I was gonna say I always really appreciate it, because I don’t give enough time to fanfiction, I go through phases of waxing and waning about reading fanfiction, and even though I’m always slightly intimidated when I’m given my homework, I always end up really enjoying it, so.

DARKWICCAN : Well, good, I’m glad that we’ve managed to pick fics that you wouldn’t normally have read, perhaps, but that you enjoyed nonetheless.

LARAGH : Yes, exactly.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so why don’t we kick things off?

LARAGH : Excellent. Our first fic lined up today is called "Dear Future Self", and it is by sscribe, and it is a fic that is just beginning, it is two chapters in, and it has less than fourteen total, so the author has planned the fic, they just haven’t finished it yet. And it’s about Waverly joining Hogwarts in fifth year, after being home schooled for all her previous years.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I thought that was really interesting. That’s a tack that –

LARAGH : Well, definitely, it’s a new take –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

LARAGH : - which is needed, because, y'know, there’s a lot of these AUs. So when you differentiate yourself like that, it’s definitely like “Ooh, that’s interesting”.

DARKWICCAN : I like the way that they made the whole homeschooling thing so that it added that element of backstory to Waverly’s character as well.

LARAGH : Yeah, no, I thought it was great, I really related to it because I too, I went to boarding school in ninth grade, when everyone else had started in seventh grade, so I related to that kind of, been pushed into this situation where everyone has made their friends and, y'know, everyone knows each other, and it’s a whole new world to kind of, y'know, explore and stuff.

DARKWICCAN : And another thing that the, sort of a perk, if you will, of having her start at fifth year, instead of at first year, is that she – the author doesn’t have to do a whole lot of building up of the potential – basically, y'know, most of the time, when authors are writing Hogwarts AUs, they will typically start them as first years, when they’re eleven years old. So they have to work through that sort of pre-teen adolescence.

LARAGH : Yeah, there’s a maturity.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, to get them to being mature, question mark, teenagers. [laughter] Where they can y'know date without it being weird. And so I kind of feel like that might be a thought process, with this author? I don’t know for sure, but “hey let’s skip all the pre-teen stuff and just get them straight to dating age”.

LARAGH : Yeah, which is interesting, and fun, and I really think that this fic has a lot of promise.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, no, it’s written quite well, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

LARAGH : It hasn’t been updated in about six months, but I did notice in the comments that earlier this month the author was replying to other comments, and she had said that she was reading through her outline, and looking at it, and stuff, so, y'know. She also specifically says in the notes, so DW and I are both writers, and we would never, ever call out another writer for not updating, because we know the frustration about motivation, we get it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

LARAGH : However, they specifically say that if they don’t update, that people should yell at them. So, I’m very gently calling out this author, if you happen to be listening, please update, because this fic is really awesome, and I think you’ve definitely got a lot you can do with it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, off to a really strong start, and I do love the motif of Waverly writing to herself in her diary as “Dear Future Self”.

LARAGH : And it’s also very funny.

DARKWICCAN : It is very funny. [laughter]

LARAGH : It’s very funny. That scene where they’re being taunted by the paintings?

DARKWICCAN : Yes! That: oh, my god.

LARAGH : I was laughing.

DARKWICCAN : And what an incredible meet-cute. [laughter]

LARAGH : Right? Oh, it was so good, I laughed so hard that I woke my dog up, it was just, it was so funny, yeah, so there’s, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : And the fact that they included Peeves? The poltergeist.

LARAGH : Yes!

DARKWICCAN : We haven’t really seen that.

LARAGH : No, no, sometimes like in passing, but definitely not like that.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, not in completely, like totally involved way, and up to his absolute y'know best, or I should say worst, hijinks.

LARAGH : Yeah, it’s so funny, and y'know I think at two chapters this is about six thousand words in, so this author has conveyed a lot in terms of humor and promise and everything in those two chapters, so, yeah, definitely, this is one that should be on everyone’s radar.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, definitely. So, and this is called "Dear Future Self", by sscribe. Alright, so there’s not much more we can say about that one, ‘cause they’re only two chapters in out of fourteen, so I guess we will barrel right along into my first selection for today’s episode, which is called "more than a name" by almostafantasia. This is an interesting fic in that, once again, we don’t really start at first year with this one. Willa is a seventh year?

LARAGH : Yes. Yes, ‘cause she’s Head Girl.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, god, I can’t just – how did that happen? [laughter] No, I’m not saying that was a bad decision by author, it’s one of things where it’s like, it’s actually a good decision, because of the authority it gives her which she can lord over.

LARAGH : The antagonism is great.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s like, somehow Willa is Head Girl, and Bobo is Head Boy, and they’re both Slytherin.

LARAGH : [laughter] Yeah, I know. So much of that, it’s probably a bit of a suspension of disbelief moment, but it’s so funny.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and it’s one of those things were like, well, I mean, if they’re both good students –

LARAGH : Right, if they’re manipulative enough -

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

LARAGH : - you can totally see that they would manipulate the teachers into thinking that they’re better than they are.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and it’s one of those things where, y'know, there’s this sort of false equivalency that can’t be avoided, where Slytherin equals evil. Which isn’t actually the case. It just means they have certain character traits, and unfortunately these character traits can lend themselves to antagonism. So, but, I mean, you can also have Gryffindors who are assholes, and I think the only house where you probably going to be batting a hundred, or a thousand, on accuracy of personality type trait to house is Hufflepuff, really.

LARAGH : Yeah, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : I think, because, I mean Ravenclaws can be douches too, so. But you’ve never heard of a Hufflepuff being an asshole. But yeah, I mean, y'know, Slytherin has a bit of a bad rap, and it’s not entirely unearned, but yeah, it is kind of hard to image Slytherin students being head anything, but it’s not impossible.

LARAGH : Yeah, so Waverly’s very much kind of living in her sister’s shadows, both Willa as Head Girl, and Wynonna, who is a sixth year, so there’s a year between each of them –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and even funnier, Wynonna is a Prefect.

LARAGH : Yes! [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : And all Waverly wanted was to be a Prefect, and she got passed over.

LARAGH : And she got passed over, and I felt for her so bad, that was like, yeah, I really felt that.

DARKWICCAN : But y'know what, though, that was a nice parallel to the show in that –

LARAGH : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - y'know, Willa was the original heir, and then, y'know, it fell to Wynonna, and –

LARAGH : Waverly – yeah, she got left out. I actually didn’t even think of that, that’s, yeah, you’re exactly right. That’s a great kind of mirror. The fic mirrors the show quite a bit, and it does it pretty well. Like when Champ gets introduced, we have to talk about Champ, apparently. One of the first things he says is that he’s glad Waverly isn’t a Prefect, because he gets to spend more time with her. Which is just such like, such a Champ, asshole thing to say.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah. Yeah.

LARAGH : That to me was like the epitome of Champ, right there. That statement, “I’m glad you didn’t get your dream so that you can spend more time with me”.

DARKWICCAN : In this story, both Wynonna and Willa are both Slytherin.

LARAGH : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, because Waverly is the first Earp to not be sorted –

LARAGH : Be a Slytherin, so it’s very much like a Malfoy kind of line. In that they’re all Slytherins, ever since Wyatt Earp.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, exactly. And Nicole, of course, in addition to being Hufflepuff, is also a Prefect. Which, again, if we’re drawing parallels to the show, makes a lot of sense. Another thing that is really interesting here is that the author, almostfantasia, takes advantage of  Willa’s presence and the sort of implication that we got from the show, that she is pretty darn close-minded about “the gays”.

LARAGH : She uses that famous Willa quote of being “a gay”.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And I thought it was really interesting how then the writer made one of Waverly’s struggles, internal struggles, being that she struggled to come out from under the shadow of the Earp name, and she struggled to do that, and she doesn’t wanna be known, she wants to be known as Waverly, she doesn’t wanna be labelled, so in her struggles with kind of coming to terms with her friendship that is really more than a friendship with Nicole, she’s like, “Well I don’t wanna be known as a lesbian, or Willa’s lesbian sister –

LARAGH : Yeah, Willa’s lesbian sister.

DARKWICCAN : - I just wanna be. Yeah, I just wanna be Waverly. Which, like, you know what, that’s a valid frustration right there.

LARAGH : And I think that’s probably how Waverly on the show feels, as well.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, mhm.

LARAGH : Yeah, she just, and think that’s why all those moments, ugh, I know, don’t wanna veer into the show, but why those moments with Nicole, and just validate Waverly for being Waverly, are so important and such an important part of their relationship.

DARKWICCAN : Well, they – and that’s not just a thing about the show, that’s a thing within this fic, as well.

LARAGH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Nicole is constantly, y'know, putting Waverly ahead of herself, as she does, that’s just a character trait, a Hufflepuff character trait, and a Nicole Haught character trait. And she, y'know, she’s always saying, y'know, it’s not about me, it’s about you, and you want, and what makes you happy, and I think that, y'know, you’re not – yes, it is a reference to the show, it can’t help to be, but it’s also true within this fic, which does a really good job of maintaining the core principles of each of the characters.

LARAGH : Which is so important. I mean, if you don’t have that, you may as well just be writing original fiction.

DARKWICCAN : Exactly. If you don’t have that, you’re not gonna end up on my show.

[laughter]

LARAGH : She has standards, everyone.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, this is the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , not the Original Fiction Addiction.

LARAGH : Yeah, so Willa is, yeah, basically just kind of this constant antagonistic figure in Waverly’s life. At one point Willa gets described as having the personality of a baby mandrake.

DARKWICCAN : Yes!

LARAGH : Which is so accurate!

DARKWICCAN : It really is, it’s so accurate. And we’re only ten chapters in, this is an unfinished fic at this point, and Willa has done her fair share of meddling in Waverly’s business. But I’m so curious to find out what is going on, what angle Bobo is playing in this whole situation, because Bobo is there, again, he’s Head Boy, he’s Willa’s boyfriend, it’s just hard to tell what angle he’s playing, which is perfect, because that’s just true for Bobo in general. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next, and I’m also looking forward to seeing Willa get her comeuppance. Okay, so that, again, that’s an unfinished fic, we’re up to chapter ten at this point, and it’s called "more than a name" by fantasia [sic]. And that was my first choice for today. But now we’re moving into our last couple of fics, which are both complete!

LARAGH : Yay! So the next fic we’re going to talk about is called "I Counted the Stars (and they led to you)" by Bootsncatz.

DARKWICCAN : [beat boxes] Nbootsncatz nbootzncatz nbootzncatz nbootzncatz. Yep.

LARAGH : DW will write jingles for anyone if you ask.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter]

LARAGH : So, first of all, I love this title, the actual title of the fic. And I love this fandom, and it’s propensity for parenthesis. I really do enjoy that about this fandom, maybe it’s in other fandoms, but it’s the first time I’ve experienced it, so kudos to you, Bootsncatz, for that title. And this fic is a one-shot. It is a long one-shot, it is thirty thousand words, which is significant. It has an E rating, state that from the beginning.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter]

LARAGH : It has an E rating, and in fact one of the tags says “10 page sex scene”.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

LARAGH : So know what you’re getting into, if you’re going to read this.

DARKWICCAN : Yep.

LARAGH : But it’s far more than that, it’s far more than its rating.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

LARAGH : It’s a whole story, in and of itself. And it’s really good. I think it’s the only fic that actually deals with one of them not being a student.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

LARAGH : So Nicole is not a student. Waverly is a student, she is a sixth year? I think?

DARKWICCAN : Seventh year.

LARAGH : Seventh year, seventh year, sorry.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

LARAGH : She is a seventh year, and Nicole is a American witch, who is coming over to England for her auror training.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, it’s an exchange program with MACUSA.

LARAGH : Okay,

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

LARAGH : Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so, for the record, Waverly is a seventh year, so she’s seventeen, and Nicole is nineteen, so there’s no real age gap problem, or anything there. Because when I first started reading it I was like, “Uh-oh, I don’t know how I feel about this”, but it’s not a problem at all.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, because the age of consent in the U.K. is seventeen. Or younger? What’s the age of consent?

LARAGH : It is, in England it is sixteen I believe.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, alright. Which I think is honestly a little more common sense-y, y'know. I think that we have varied age of consent laws depending on the state. In general the age of consent in the U.S. in eighteen, which is the age that you’re considered an adult, and can vote. But yeah, I think sixteen, honestly, just makes more sense.

LARAGH : Yeah, especially if we’re talking about, y'know, someone up to nineteen, who’s, y'know, still a teenager as well.

DARKWICCAN : Exactly, exactly. Yeah, y'know, I’m with you there, when I first started reading it, I was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa”.

[laughter]

LARAGH : Y'know, it’s really funny, I know exactly what GIF you’re mimicking.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it was just like, wait a second, wait a second. ‘Cause I’m always a little bit cautious when it comes to situations where you have ostensibly an adult character and a minor character, so I was able to go, “okay, wait a minute, no, it’s England, it’s different”. And also when Boots revealed Nicole’s age, as you say, as nineteen, it was kind of a bit of a “phew!” moment.

LARAGH : Yep. I was like, “okay”. So, yeah, it’s good. I think this is also the only one where Waverly is into Quidditch.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, she is into Quidditch, and she plays Quidditch. She’s a chaser, and again, she’s a Hufflepuff, that’s a bit of a trend here, and in this case she’s Head Girl for her senior year – sorry, her seventh year.

LARAGH : Seventh year, yes.

DARKWICCAN : So everything’s coming up Waverly.

LARAGH : Yeah, no, it’s good, it’s a very sweet fic, there’s no gay panic on Waverly’s part –

DARKWICCAN : Nope.

LARAGH : - so there’s no kind of dealing with that, she’s confident in who she likes, or who she doesn’t like. There’s – it’s also funny, which we would kind of expect from Bootscatz, who’s regularly funny.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. Bootsncatz is so funny.

LARAGH : For me the funniest thing was Nicole, who was muggle-born, I think she’s muggle-born in every Hogwarts AU ever, which is, y'know, relates to the show, mirrors the show. And she teaches Nicole [sic] how to use a cell phone.

DARKWICCAN : I love that!

LARAGH : How to take a selfie! And how to use emojis.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah.

LARAGH : [laughter] Waverly’s like, “I can make the little pictures appear!” and she sends a unicorn. [crying with laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yes, exactly! I think one of my favorite lines was where she is sending a text – Waverly is sending Nicole a text and it says “did you know that you can send tiny pictures over instant text messages too?” and Nicole just says, “You can just call it a text. And yes I did”.

[laughter]

LARAGH : So funny.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, Boots is – oh, god. I’m sure, audience, you’ve noticed by now, listening audience, that Boots’s name comes up a lot, and there are two reasons why. One, she is incredibly prolific. And two, her quality of work is bar setting. It is the level that everyone should aspire to, as far as the quality of writing that she puts out. So, yeah, she’s gonna keep popping up. Just, yeah, no worries there. [laughter] But yeah, so that’s "I Counted the Stars (and they led to you)" by Bootsncatz.

LARAGH : [beat boxes] Nbootsncatz nbootzncatz nbootzncatz.

DARKWICCAN : Which brings us to our final selection today: "If your Dear Heart is Wounded my Wild Heart Bleeds with Yours" by EmJayAnders. Let me just say, that’s another great title. What a great title.

LARAGH : Right? I was just about to say, and I have much respect for them for going with a long title. ‘Cause people often try to do the short and snappy, and those are great, but, y'know, if the long title works for you, if it works for your fic, embrace it.

DARKWICCAN : So, okay. So, again, this is called "If your Dear Heart is Wounded my Wild Heart Bleeds with Yours" by EmJayAnders. And this is a fic that covers all seven years –

LARAGH : Yep.

DARKWICCAN : - of Hogwarts. For Waverly, for Waverly. Because Wynonna and Nicole have already been. Have already been?

LARAGH : No, Nicole starts with Waverly.

DARKWICCAN : That’s right, Nicole – and this is one of those times where Nicole and Waverly are the same age –

LARAGH : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - a thing that doesn’t really happen that often.

LARAGH : No, no, only really in high school AUs, because it’s forced -

DARKWICCAN : Exactly.

LARAGH : - that their age gap has to be shorter than the five years that they actually are. And the same with Wynonna, obviously she can’t be seven years apart and still be in high school.

DARKWICCAN : Right, exactly. So, something that the author does is they, again, it’s all seven years, and for the first four years, those are all single chapter. Yeah, and so it’s chapters one through four are years one through four. But I believe it’s when we get to fifth year that we start increasing, yeah, we start increasing the chapters per school year. So fifth year is two chapters –

LARAGH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - sixth year is three -

LARAGH : Two chapters.

DARKWICCAN : - chapters, and seventh year is three chapters.

LARAGH : Seventh year is three chapters, yes.

DARKWICCAN : And that mirrors J.K. Rowling’s book series, really. Where the books start off kinda slim –

LARAGH : As the books got bigger.

DARKWICCAN : So, similarly the chapters got bigger, and for this story. But it’s really great, and it makes a whole lot of sense, too, because there’s more to explore the older than you get, there’s more can do with the characters.

LARAGH : Yep. Especially when the characters are –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

LARAGH : - romantically involved. Because obviously once they become romantically involved there’s more to expand upon.

DARKWICCAN : There are things that parallel the television show, there’s Champ, of course, is around, and he and Waverly sort of have a thing [sigh]. I’m so tired of Champ.

LARAGH : Yeah. I mean they have as much of a thing as, like, you know that I don’t normally like reading fics where one of them is with someone else. That’s just not the kind of fic I like to read. But when it’s Champ, and I don’t even give a frig, because he’s so insignificant. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. And the same thing goes here. But I mean it was really nice to see him get socked a couple times. That was pretty cool.

LARAGH : Yeah, he got socked. And you what, he written awfully in the sense that he was written well in the sense that he was written awfully, because he awful.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, he is just a douchcanoe.

LARAGH : Yeah, the captured that like inherent douchiness.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and it was also an opportunity to see how Nicole deals with Waverly being in a relationship that’s not with her.

LARAGH : Yes! The jealousy.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, a little bit of jealousy going on, and also, again, this is essentially a coming of age story, but –

LARAGH : Innocent, yes.

DARKWICCAN : So we get to see the two of them grow and – they start off as really close friends, I mean, they basically meet on the train to Hogwarts and that’s all they wrote.

LARAGH : Yeah, it’s just, it’s a really fun journey of seeing them become innocent friends, to not so innocent…

DARKWICCAN : But definitely still friends. [laughter]

LARAGH : More.

DARKWICCAN : Gal pals.

LARAGH : Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gal pals.

DARKWICCAN : From being innocent friends to gal pals. [laughter] But it’s also fun to watch them kind of go through the classes. I think it was really interesting that MJ decided that Waverly was gonna struggle. If I recall correctly she was struggling with one of her classes that Nicole ended up helping with, and that’s –

LARAGH : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - something that I think was a bit of a bold choice because we don’t typically see Waverly struggling with academics.

LARAGH : Yeah, it was – there’s one line, actually, I think they talk about when they’re revising. Actually, I think that they might be, at that point, revising in air quotes, because they’re together, but I think it’s Waverly says, “Now, I believe you promised me some help with vampire weaknesses?” And it made me laugh really hard because I imagined Laura Hollis using it as a pick-up line.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. Yeah. But speaking of learning things, Wynonna ends up teaching both Waverly and Nicole how to summon patronuses, or patroni, as I like to say.

LARAGH : [laughter] So Wynonna graduates and is an Auror in training, right, in this? And she comes back to Hogwarts and –

DARKWICCAN : I want to say it’s -

LARAGH : Fifth year? Fourth year?

DARKWICCAN : No, it’s later than that, isn’t it?

LARAGH : Oh is it, is later, sixth year?

DARKWICCAN : I wanna say fifth or sixth year, yeah.

LARAGH : Fifth or sixth year. And she teaches them how to, yeah, charm their patronuses. Patroni. And it’s a really fun scene, or scenes, and I think the conclusion, the climax of it is just so sweet. How that’s used as like the metaphor for Waverly discovering her patronus, and then discovering her feelings for Nicole.

DARKWICCAN : I did like that, how MJ used that as a device where the – because, and I think, gosh, it’s been a minute since I read the books, but didn’t Harry Potter’s parents have similar patronuses? Like his dad was a stag –

LARAGH : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - and his mom was a doe, or something like that?

LARAGH : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : I kind of wonder if that was sort of a similar thought process here, In fact, I wonder about a few things in this fic, this finely written piece, and I think –

LARAGH : Do you? Do you really?

DARKWICCAN : I do wonder. Or, to quote Olivander, “I wand-er”.

LARAGH : Wonder if you might be able to get some answers to those questions.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yes. So why don’t we see if we can corner MJ in Diagon Alley, and hold them at wand point and ask some questions of them, whaddya say?

LARAGH : I’m down for that.

DARKWICCAN : Fantastic. Well we have got MJ waiting in the wings, ready to come on to join us here for the second segment of our show today. [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Spiral of Secrets by Kan R. Gao

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody, and welcome back to the Earp Fiction Addiction, the podcast dedicate entirely to Wynonna Earp fanfiction. I am your host, Darkwiccan, and with me is my wonderful guest co-host:

LARAGH : Hey, it’s Laragh.

DARKWICCAN : And we are super excited this segment to be able to talk ot the author of one of our four favourite Hogwarts AU fics: EmJayAnders, who we are gonna call EmJay for this. Hey EmJay, welcome to the show.

EMJAY : Hi, thanks for having me.

DARKWICCAN : Well we are enchanted to have you on the show with us today, I’m sure I must confess, using enchanted was Laragh’s idea. [laughter] But, much like critical words do, but, yeah, it is so much fun having you on the show. We haven’t addressed the Hogwarts alternative universe trend that has taken over a good chunk of the fanfic writing fandom, so I have to ask you, EmJay, how did you get into both fandoms, both _Harry Potter_ and the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom?

EMJAY : Well _Harry Potter_ came from my mum. I am British, and she is a big, big fan of the series, so she encouraged me to get into it when I was quite young. But I took a while to get into it, but as soon as I was a part of the fandom it was no going back. As far as _Wynonna Earp_ ’s concerned, I found a post on Tumblr. It was the scene where Waverly and Nicole first meet, and it was like, the caption was like, “This is the gayest thing I’ve ever seen.” And I was like “Oh, I need to watch this show”. [laughter] So, I found the show online and I was hooked from the first episode, I just adored it. And it was one of the – ‘cause I’d gotten out of writing fanfic for quite a while, so and then _Wynonna Earp_ actually brought me back into it, which was really nice.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, nice, so that actually leads into my next question, which is the how did  you get started in fanfic question.

EMJAY : Well, it’s quite an embarrassing story if I’m honest. I was about thirteen, fourteen, I think, and I was really, really ill, and off school, and I was obsessed with _Glee_ at the time, as all young gays where, and I decided to write a fanfic for Brittana, which was my first ever queer ship. So I wrote horrific fanfiction that, it got posted, only half of it ever went online back on fanfiction dot net, but then I deleted it and wanted to wipe it from existence, it was so bad. I think it was – actually, I looked up how long it was, and it ended up being longer than _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban_ , by word count.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, my gosh.

EMJAY : Yeah, I just like blasted it out, And that’s how I got into fanfic, and  then I wiped that from existence. [laughter] ‘Cause it was –

DARKWICCAN : So don’t go looking for it, is what you’re saying?

EMJAY : Oh, no, it’s pretty bad. And then I think it was _Carmilla_ I got into, and that brought me back into the fanfiction scene. And I discovered Archive of Our Own, which I thought was a much better platform. And I’ve always been a big fan of reading fanfiction, and I do love creative writing in my spare time, so I was like, “oh, let’s combine the two”. So that ended up working out quite well.

DARKWICCAN : It’s always fun when you take two things that you love and just sort moosh them together.

EMJAY : Yeah, definitely.

LARAGH : I wanna know how you decided who you were gonna sort into each house, because there’s lots of debate about this.

EMJAY : Yeah, I noticed that, in the fandom, not gonna lie. I always saw like conflicting views. Like, I always knew that they were both gonna be in the same house, both Waverly and Nicole, ‘cause I always thought it was like an interesting dynamic. ‘Cause like they had the option of like sharing a room, and all that. And I’ve always considered them both Hufflepuff, like that was something I thought about way about in 2016 when I actually started writing the fic. I’ve always like, personally, headcanoned them both in that houses like, ‘cause I do think they do have attributes of the other houses, like Nicole’s quite brave, Waverly’s quite smart, but at the same time what always struck me about them was their capacity for like love and loyalty, and I think it’s a really telling Hufflepuff trait, and that’s what like really spoke to me about having them in that house. For Wynonna, it was funny, I actually considered her to be a Gryffindor, at first, but after I wrote the first chapter I actually went back and changed it, ‘cause I was like, “Oh yeah, she’s really, really brave, and she does have a lot of those traits, but she is quite a cunning person, and obviously she has a lot more Slytherin traits, and I though at that age, when she would be sorted, she would be a bit more Slytherin-esque, as opposed to Gryffindor. I think she more grows into a Gryffindor, and has those traits. So though she is like quite brave, she is rather cunning.

DARKWICCAN : So, yeah, you had mentioned that Hufflepuff was something that you had in mind for them from the very beginning. It does seem to be the most popular house to put Nicole and Waverly into. You’d mentioned loyal and loving: what else about Hufflepuff speaks to you more than say a Ravenclaw. Or even a Gryffindor, but I think that Nicole and Waverly either tend to be sorted into Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw.

EMJAY : Yeah. Like I say, I think it’s the loyalty thing, y'know? Like, Waverly’s so dedicated to both her family and friends, and Nicole, as well, in the show. And like, even when they make mistakes, or hurt her, like she’s still willing to risk everything for them, and I think the same goes for Nicole. Like, Waverly does have the tendencies of a Ravenclaw, with her passion for knowledge, but I think it’s her dedication to it that more makes her a Hufflepuff –

DARKWICCAN : Okay. I – yeah.

EMJAY : Nicole, I’ve never really considered her to be any other house. She does, like I said, have like bravery and everything, but I do think, at the end of the day, she is a very, very loyal person, and it’s that loyalty that really defines her as a character, that I thought would fit more with a Hufflepuff trait, rather than Gryffindor.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that makes sense, I gotta agree with you. It’s interesting, I always find it interesting when I read multiple Hogwarts AUs, and sort of take an average of where the characters end up, and, yeah, I can see Nicole either as a Hufflepuff or a Gryffindor. But I think you’re absolutely right, she is so very loyal, and so very loving, that yeah, I think you may have convinced me. But anyway, anyway. Sorting hats are fun, yay! [laughter]

LARAGH : So you clearly have thought a lot about, y'know, the decisions you’ve made within the fic, with the houses, and their relationship dynamic. So, I’m curious about the style that you use, which is that you compress, and y'know, entire school years into one chapter, sometimes two or three towards the end. How did you keep the flow kind of intact when you were covering such a long period of time in a relatively short amount of space?

EMJAY : Honestly, I’m not gonna lie, I did quite struggle. The fic, actually, it took me two years to write. I spent ages planning, and changing, and then deciding to post, or not to post. Like at first the plan was to keep the structure of it, like one school year per chapter, and it was only gonna be seven chapters long. But as I kept writing, like I found I wanted to include more and more as the chapters were coming out, and it ended being like double, or even like triple the size to the previous ones. And I’m not gonna lie, I’ve always been one for chapter size continuity. So I though that as they got older and there was more freedom in what I could have them doing, like as a couple or as friends, I could make the chapters longer. It’s kinda similar to how J.K. originally structured the books, so as Harry got older, the books got longer, and the language got more complex. And that was something I kind of unintentionally fed into, as I made the chapters longer as they got older.

DARKWICCAN : You know, I was gonna comment on that, actually. That they did sort of mirror the books in that way, in that started off kind of short, and then just got longer, and longer, until you get to the seventh – essentially the seventh chapter, or the seventh year, I should say, that is three parts long. [laughter] It’s like, this feels very familiar. This story is largely a coming of age tale, there isn’t really a secondary plot running through like we had, y'know, He Who Must Not Be Named in the actual _Harry Potter_ series, where we had the sort of external threat that sort of ran through the entire series. But in this case, this is just really more, almost just a high school AU coming of age story. But you do bring a dark wizard on the loose into play in the latter part of the storyline. So, I’m wondering, is that something that you had originally thought of as a larger piece to the story, sort of similar to the _Harry Potter_ series itself, or was it something that came in at the end of the writing process?

EMJAY : Well it actually came into it quite late, but as you said, it’s kind of like a high school AU, I did want it to be a coming of age tale, because there’s a lot of darkness in the original material, and I kind of wanted to have to have like a bit more of a lighter story. But irealised later on that Bobo didn’t have as much of a role in the story as I wanted him to have, like other than what I’ve mentioned in Waverly’s recollections of her childhood. So I figured I’d bring him back for kind of like one last scare sort of thing. And I quite like interweaving bits of the show into scenes in the story, so like bits of dialogue, or like specific moments, and I really loved the season one finale, with Bobo and the party, and I kind of wanted to mirror that in the story. It was never really meant to be like a big thing, nothing like mind-changing or earth-shattering, just kind of like a little nod to the show, and of course like who doesn’t love a bit of drama at a dance, like, you’ve got to have a bit of angst in there at the end.

LARAGH : Yeah, I loved it, I wasn’t expecting it, and I loved that it was just a little like, oh! Because you’re kind of anticipating the end of the entire fic, and then suddenly you’re like in this moment with, you don’t expect a moment with Bobo, and I’m like, whoa.

[laughter]

EMJAY : It’s kind of like that horror movie thing, like the killer always come back for one last scare, I was like, gotta have Bobo back in there at some point, he’s such a good character you can’t just leave him to the past.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, Bobo is a lot of fun to play around with for sure. I’ve actually been enjoying seeing him crop up more and more in fics. Especially after the end of season two. ‘Cause he’s just a fun character for people to play around with.

EMJAY : Yeah, he’s very versatile, like there’s a lot you can do with him, you can either have him be a little bit crazy, or like more crazy, or just really evil, or like troubled, but he’s a very versatile character, I think.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely.

LARAGH : You can have him be crazy, or more crazy. I love that.

EMJAY : He’s always gotta be just a little bit crazy.

LARAGH : Those are Bobo’s two options, crazy or more crazy.

[laughter]

EMJAY : He’s not a zero to a hundred, he’s more of a fifty to a hundred kinda guy.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. He’s got a baseline of insanity just sort of running. But, I don’t that Bobo nuts, I think he’s incredibly cunning.

EMJAY : He’s very Slytherin.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, he is Slytherin, he is Slytherin, through and through, for sure. But I think he knows what he’s doing, all the time, I don’t –

EMJAY : Oh, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

EMJAY : He’s very calculating.

DARKWICCAN : Exactly, he’s super calculating, ‘cause yeah, when I think of someone who’s like crazy, I feel like there’s an element of lack of control?

EMJAY : Mmm.

DARKWICCAN : And Bobo, if Bobo is anything, he is never out of control.

EMJAY : That’s very true.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah.

LARAGH : He just has like, no boundaries.

DARKWICCAN : Right.

LARAGH : He’ll do anything.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. Okay, so anyway, back to this story. [laughter]

LARAGH :  Oh boy, you guys, okay. So one of my favorite parts of the whole story was when Waverly discovered her patronus, and from that discovered, or realized, her feelings for Nicole. And I thought when her patronus came out I was really, I was kind of surprised, but in a good way, I would never have picked that for Waverly, but I can see it as well. So I’m curious as to why you picked that?

EMJAY : I mean, I’m not gonna lie, it took me so long to decide on her patronus. I think I changed it like three, maybe four times, when I was writing. I can’t even remember what I had as her original patronus, but I flipped between about three different animals before eventually deciding on a dog. And I swear, I must trawled the _Harry Potter_ wiki for hours researching like what traits fit what Patronus. And after I decided on Nicole’s, and I read that like soulmates often have similar Patronuses, like Lily and James, I thought it would be a nice idea to have them both have like dog Patronuses. But that then opened up the question of like what breed of dogs they would both be. I looked through the different traits of dog breeds for like ages to figure out like what suited them both best, and I feel like Nicole has this desire to always help people, and Saint Bernards are often used in like mountain rescue and stuff, so I figured that went well with her personality. But with Waverly it took me way longer, ‘cause there’s so many different aspects of her personality that I thought could fit a Patronus. I eventually went with Golden Retriever, though, because I knew their temperament and personality quite well, ‘cause my grandma had one when I was growing up, and it’s surprising how well it actually fit Waverly, when I considered it. And like they’re known for being super friendly, and Waverly is like the nicest girl in Purgatory, and they’re also really loyal, and like I said before, I think that’s one of Waverly’s like main character traits.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely, I completely agree with you, I think that I was also surprised when her Patronus showed up and it was a golden retriever, right?

EMJAY : Mhm.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, ‘cause I mean the impulse, I think, is to give her a unicorn.

[laughter]

EMJAY : That is –

DARKWICCAN : So I thought it was great. And also there’s this kind of joke in fandom as well, like Nicole’s a puppy, so of course she’d have a dog for a Patronus.

EMJAY : Oh, yes, of course.

DARKWICCAN : But, I mean, yeah, there’s also a bit of Waverly as a puppy too, so I thought that was a really cute little nod to fandom. And Saint Bernards are one of my favorite large dogs, ‘cause my dad actually had a Saint Bernard when he was growing up, so that’s like, aww, yes.

EMJAY : They are very cute.

DARKWICCAN : And super sweet, and so gentle, and loving, and yeah. So Nicole, so Nicole. So, okay, so something that has been on my mind, EmJay, that I have to ask you. I see this happening a lot in any AU that takes place in high school, whether it’s a Hogwarts AU, or a real world type AU, or what have you, and that is that there’s always a Champ. There’s always a Champ, so, and the thing is, is that’s a choice that authors get to make, whether or not there’s gonna be a Champ. So my question for you is was it a matter of needing Waverly to have an experience with a boy-man, or to have a poor relationship experience, to get her to realize what she really wanted, or were you trying to mirror the show with having Champ there?

EMJAY : It was kind of mix of both, I think. Like I said, earlier, I’m a big fan of giving nods to references in the original material, when I write AUs. And Champ was such a big part of season one that I knew I had to include him in the fic, like he was a major, major part of Waverly as a character. Like, he really defined her season one, I thought. He was like this tie to her life of doing what people wanted, and I loved how she broke free of that, and I kind of wanted to work my own take on it, so that’s why I originally decided to include in the fic, like to mirror the show, but also to give that experience of like what a relationship shouldn’t be like, so she could appreciate what she would then get with Nicole. Also, like, I’m a sucker for angst. And I knew I wanted Nicole to have a little struggle with like seeing Waverly with Champ, and although I never took the narrative focus to Nicole, ‘cause I did debate that when I was originally writing, like having a chapter from Nicole’s point of view, but I knew that wanted Waverly to see Nicole struggling. And like not know what was going on, why she felt that way, like were they growing apart, and just to give that like little bit of angst in there.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I think that you achieved that handily. I think that your Champ was a good sort of, definitely a call back to the show, just aggravating enough that you’re just like, “god, would you go away, like, why are you here?”

[laughter]

EMJAY : I remember, when I was writing it and posting it, I got a comment on one of the chapters with Champ, and it was someone like literally like saying “can he die already?” Like why is he in this fic, you don’t need a Champ” and I was like “but I do, though, I want the angst.

DARKWICCAN : So your Champ is a good kind of mirroring of the show Champ, in that he is just kind of, as I said, y'know, god will he go away, but one thing that you added a little bit of, just a little bit, is you kind of took the idea of Champ being a raging homophobe, from the show, and you made it a bit more intentional by having him essentially fling mud in Nicole’s face. What made you decide to take him that extra step further into douche town?

EMJAY : Well, like I said, he was a big, big part of season one, and I wanted to give him a bit more, not screen time, necessarily, but narrative time, and I thought that having like coming back to the idea of him being homophobic would be quite interesting cause although there was a storyline around it in the show, because it was towards the end of the season there wasn’t really much done with it, with him not being in season two. So I kind of wanted to give a little bit of extra focus to that, ‘cause I’ve dealt with a lot of homophobic people in my life, and I was like, oh let’s have some experiences like put into the story to like show that obviously not everyone is fantastic about queer people. But I thought it was an interesting side of Champ’s character, that I could play around with a little bit more. And give it just a little bit more angst.

DARKWICCAN : Do you wish that the show would have done a little bit more with Champ, in that way?

EMJAY : I think it would have been interesting to see like if he’d only been in like a couple of episodes of season two, maybe, or in the alternate universe episode, like if it had he that Waverly was marrying, rather than Perry, I thought that would have been interesting. Just to have him come back in, or just to maybe even to have some sort of redemption, like, he got over it, or something like that, I just thought it would have been interesting to see like an ending to Champ’s story, more than what he got.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. What was it, I think Emily actually said something about, “Yeah, we thought about bringing Champ back, but we just couldn’t stand him”. [laughter]

EMJAY : I mean, that is also fair. See, Bobo’s a character you love to hate. Champ: you just hate him.

DARKWICCAN : Well, I think that he is just that archetypal character, y'know, the bigoted, I mean, yeah, it’s one of those things were I struggle with, is with Champ, and I don’t know how this became Champ talk, it’s my fault, but I don’t know that Champ truly is homophobic. I think he’s just an idiot, and I think that he was just pissed off that Waverly moved on so quickly, and I don’t know that it really had so much to do with Nicole being a woman. I mean, I really don’t know! And so yeah, I am curious to kinda, I would like to peer behind the eyeballs of that guy, and kind of see what his, y'know, how many monkeys he’s got running the circus in his head, ‘cause I think that, yeah, he said some stupid shit, but I don’t think that it was really from a place of homophobia, I think was just from a place of jealousy and upset.

EMJAY : Yeah, I agree. Champ is quite a childish character and I think that he was just clinging onto Waverly, and that’s like what made it happen in the show, like those comments he made towards Nicole, I think it was just childish jealously, really.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

EMJAY : As opposed to like really venomous homophobia.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. Would you say that’s kind of the same for you Champ, in your story, as well?

EMJAY : Yeah, I would agree, like, I do think he is quite bigoted, but I think it’s because he’s uneducated, like he’s ignorant and he doesn’t know enough to make the correct judgments and that’s why it’s kind of like he was so in love with Waverly, and saw so much in her, and even then, like, he was a bit, I dunno, I don’t know whether or not I could ever say that the Champ in my story was really in love with Waverly, more that he was like obsessed with her. Like, he just he fixated on her, kind of like a child, like, you fixate on something and you become obsessed with it, you love it but you never really see it as – I think Champ saw Waverly more as an object to have, a trophy to win –

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

EMJAY : - rather than as a girlfriend, or someone to love,

LARAGH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I think that’s a very valid assessment, for sure.

LARAGH : Yeah, for sure. I think in any universe that Waverly is the best Champ can ever do, not just in the girlfriend stakes, but just in life stakes. Being with her is the best he could ever get, so to lose her is like a demotion.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that’s – excellent assessment, Laragh.

[laughter]

EMJAY : Ten out of ten.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

LARAGH : After all that Champ talk – this isn’t a question, it’s more of a statement – but I just wanted to thank you because not only did Champ get punched once in this fic, he got punched twice. And I found that super satisfying.

[laughter]

EMJAY : You’re very welcome. I mean, I live for the fans. [laughter] In the season one finale, like that punch from Nicole, that was incredible, I felt that myself, it was beautiful. And I just, I wanted to have it just a couple more times, y'know? Really hit home, I do not like Champ.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yes, I think that Nicole was all of us when she socked Champ in the jaw.

EMJAY : Oh, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : ‘Cause she really didn’t, she honestly didn’t need to sock him in the jaw to stop him, but she made that choice, and we all cheered.

LARAGH : And the look Waverly gives her afterwards is also all of us.

EMJAY : Oh, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, absolutely.

EMJAY : Definitely.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, man. So anyway, anyway. Enough Champ talk. I have a question for you about the original Hogwarts character, y'know, the original gang of three, Harry, and Ron, and Hermione. Most Hogwarts AUs, in fact I would say definitely the hard majority always set the story after the end of the Harry Potter series, so our characters, our titular characters, as in the original storylines, are no longer there, or if they are there, they’re sort of off in the background of legend, right?

EMJAY : Mhm.

DARKWICCAN : So if you were to continue this story, if you suddenly thought, “You know what? I wanna pick up where I left off, and follow these two into adulthood” would you bring in the original characters from the J.K. Rowling series, or…?

EMJAY : It’s a good question, actually. I don’t know. I do love, obviously, the core three, I loved them all the way through, like young teen-hood. So I dunno, I don’t whether or not I could do them justice on paper. I dunno that I could write them in. But, I dunno, I think it would be interesting to have like Waverly meet her heroes. ‘Cause, like Waverly’s gonna be like obsessed with Hermione, like, we can all see it.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, totally. Oh yeah.

EMJAY : That would be her like celeb crush, would be Hermione Granger. So I dunno, I think would be interesting to have her meet her, and just like have an utter melt down. [laughter]

LARAGH : Waverly fangirling over Hermione.

[laughter]

EMJAY : Yeah. Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, my gosh. Well, there’s a one shot for you, there you go.

EMJAY : That’s a good idea.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Alright, listeners, it’s EmJay’s idea first.

EMJAY : I’m calling it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, nobody jump the gun here. Or jump the wand. Speaking of wands, I can’t recall, did you go into detail as far as the core of Waverly’s wand, in the story?

EMJAY : I think I did. Hang on, let me check. I feel like I did, I’m fairly certain I did, ‘cause I think it’s really, really interesting, like wands and stuff in the _Harry Potter_ universe, I like love them.

LARAGH : Because Wynonna’s wand changes, doesn’t it?

DARKWICCAN : Does Wynonna’s change?

EMJAY : Yeah, she gets a different one, I think.

DARKWICCAN : That’s right, yeah. Yeah, you do spend a good, solid paragraph in Olivander’s.

EMJAY : I just, I really like Olivander. Like, he’s a good character.

DARKWICCAN : He is a great character. Oh, man, Olivander, he’s like one of those characters you just want to hug.

EMJAY : Yeah, definitely. And yeah, it was a dragon heartstring center for Waverly.

DARKWICCAN : So what does that mean, is that symbolic of anything?

EMJAY : I think it’s, I remember researching this for ages. If memory serves, it’s something to do with like strength in yourself, kind of like – oh, I dunno. I remember thinking like I didn’t want to have a unicorn hair, because I remember reading – well, when I wrote this there was only a couple of Hogwarts AUs out at the time, and a couple of them were one-shots – but I remember vividly them both having Waverly as having a unicorn hair wand, and I was like, I don’t wanna play into that. Although I love the unicorn joke in the show, I didn’t wanna play into that, I was like, oh no, I think I could give Waverly something different. And I went with dragon heartstring. I think, if I’m honest, it’s, when I did the quiz, it’s what I got.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, okay.

EMJAY : I can’t remember, it was something to do with like believing in yourself, or something along those lines. It was something that was very Waverly, I remember thinking, like, that’s very Waverly, and that’s why I went with it, but I can’t remember what it was.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] It was something.

EMJAY : There was a reasoning behind it, but it was two years ago so it’s quite hard to remember.

DARKWICCAN : Well, I’m going to look it up real quick here. Okay, wand lore. “Dragon heartstrings produce wands with the most power, and which are capable of the most flamboyant spells. Dragon wands tend to learn more quickly than other types…” that makes sense!

EMJAY : That was it, that was why I picked it, now I remember.

DARKWICCAN : “…and they can change allegiance if won from the original master, but they will always bond strongly with the current owner…[oh!]… the wand tends to turn easiest to the dark arts, too…” that also makes sense, too.

EMJAY : Yeah. I clearly knew what I was talking about.

DARKWICCAN : You totally did, good job. [laughter] Okay, well, this has been so much fun, I am such a nerd for Harry Potter, it’s been such a joy reading these stories, like you said at the beginning, it’s so nice to take the two things that you love and sort of smoosh them together, so I’ve been really the prep work for this week’s episode, and your story in particular, and it’s just been so wonderful being able to geek out with you, here today.

LARAGH : Yeah, for sure, this was a blast.

EMJAY : It has indeed been a blast.

DARKWICCAN : But before we let you go, and release to apparate, or Floo powder, to your  next adventure, we do have to ask you the final question.

EMJAY : Oh. Sounds serious.

DARKWICCAN : And Laragh, as my – yes, it’s very serious, it is, we take this very seriously around here. So, Laragh, as my guest host, guest co-host, I would love it if you would ask our wonderful guest the final question.

LARAGH : You’re stranded on a desert island, and you can only have one fanfiction. What do you choose?

EMJAY : Oh, that’s so difficult. Oh, I’ve read so many. I think I’d go with… oh, I know exactly which one. “when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls” by deathrae. I still haven’t finished it –

DARKWICCAN : Awesome.

EMJAY : - but it’s such a good fic. Like, it’s so intricate and well-written. Like, the world-building is amazing. Also, it’s like seventy chapters so it would entertain me for a good while.

DARKWICCAN : Excellent choice, and you know, deathrae’s also writing the B-sides, as well, so you would have not only the actual core fic, but then the sort of interstitial chapters that were missed out of the original fic.

EMJAY : OH, yeah. You’d have loads to keep you entertained.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. I think of all the werewolf AUs, that is my favorite werewolf AU, so excellent choice.

EMJAY : Why thank you.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yeah. Alrighty, well, I think we’ve held you captive here long enough, EmJay, again, thank you so much for coming on and chatting with us today, it has been, as I’ve said before, we’ve been enchanted, thank you Laragh for that. We have been utterly enchanted to have you with us.

EMJAY : Well, thank you so much for inviting me on. It was a big surprise, I made a big deal out of it to my friends.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Now you’ve got extra street cred.

EMJAY : Oh, yeah, definitely. All my friends are like massive nerds, they were obsessed with the idea of me being on a podcast.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well now you’ll have the recording to take and show off to legions of friends.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks again for taking the time out of your day to listen to our little show. Enormous thanks to EmJayAnders for taking time out of their busy schedule to come on the show to discuss their fic 'If your Dear Heart is Wounded my Wild Heart Bleeds with Yours'. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro, and to Barb and Dot Mackenzie for [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM].

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Flower Dance by Eric Barone; Spiral of Secrets by Kan R. Gao, featuring Laura Shigihara; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast


	19. Howl at the Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week on the show DW and Delayne discuss their two favorite Werewolf stories and then sit down to chat with author Deathrae!

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/howl-at-the-moon)

 

Read the fics!

 

[Lone Wolf](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11995896) by RogueTiger

 

[when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12019983) by deathrae

 

 

 

Deathrae's 'Desert Island Fic' is:  [Boys](https://archiveofourown.org/works/947988/chapters/1852186) by caseyvalhalla

 

Transcript for the Deaf and HOH by FlyingFanatic!

 

EFA Episode 19 - Howl at the Moon

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my fantabulous co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And this week we are feeling a little scrippy, feeling a little… have you been dipped for fleas, Delayne, did you get your flea dip? [laughter] I am currently wearing a flea collar, because –

DELAYNE : I figured we’d just start howling.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, go for it.

DELAYNE : [howls] [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : [howls] [laughter] This week we are tackling our favorite werewolf AU stories, and –

DELAYNE : Well, not AU, no -

DARKWICCAN : - we only have two.

DELAYNE : - you say AU, but we are not – these aren’t necessarily AU, we’ve got a full on canon.

DARKWICCAN : Well, here, okay, canon-adjacent at – canon adjacent.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Well, I guess –

DARKWICCAN : And ultimately –

DELAYNE : Yeah, I concede to your point that you’re trying to get to, I’m going to interrupt you before you do, I, yes, it is an alternate canon, so therefore it is a universe that is different, okay.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] And especially, I think we only have two of them this week because the two that we selected –

DELAYNE : They are beasts –

DARKWICCAN : They are beasts.

DELAYNE : - of fics.

DARKWICCAN : Which is appropriate, because they’re about werewolves. But, yeah, they’re massive, they’re huge, one of them is over a hundred and fifty-eight chapters long at this point, and still going. So we thought that was more than enough, we didn’t need to try to come up with four, we were good with these two that we’re gonna be talking about today. So because they’re so long, and because they’re so massive, I think we can kind of cut out a chunk of the preamble here and just dive right into the first one, what do you say, Delayne?

DELAYNE : [laughter] That sounds fantastic. So -

DARKWICCAN : Alrighty.

DELAYNE : - how about we talk about “Lone Wolf” by RogueTiger?

DARKWICCAN : Let’s do it. [laughter] Dead silence.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I’ll just randomly howling. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : [howls] So this fic is the one that’s a hundred and fifty-eight chapters so far. It is ongoing, almost three hundred and eighty-four thousand words at this point, it began canon-adjacent, it has now sort of gone off on its own track –

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - which it sort of had to sustain this length of storytelling. Each of the individual chapters aren’t particularly over-long, so you can, y'know, get through a chapter –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - relatively quickly, but still a hundred and fifty eight of them, that’s –

DELAYNE : That’s a lot.

DARKWICCAN : - rather a lot, right? But yeah, let’s see, I’m gonna do a little bit of magic math here, figure it out.

DELAYNE : I believe a little over two thousand.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, about twenty-four hundred words a chapter, so that’s not too bad if you’re just taking it a chapter at a time. Yeah, a hundred and fifty-eight, that’s a ways to go. And such an interesting take on werewolf mythology in this storyline. Y'know, Delayne, I know that you’ve made a lot of notes on mythology, werewolf mythology, I have made a few, but I think between the two of us we could probably go off just on the mythological aspect for ages. But what stood out to you, in this story?

DELAYNE : My notes after the summary, actually, is, I’m surprised, I actually put A/B/O as one of my first notes on what makes it different.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, this is tagged as an A/B/O fic, that’s Alpha/Beta/Omega. If you go back to episode four of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ podcast we dedicated an entire episode to this sub-genre of fiction. But what is interesting about this story, “Lone Wolf”, is that although we do have that A/B/O element, in that there are Alpha wolves, and Beta wolves, and Omega wolves, and typically Alphas mate with Omegas, what we don’t have is female Alphas developing that extra part. [laughter]

DELAYNE : Which was a significant portion of that previous discussion.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : On the previous podcast. But yeah, the author does note that they’re even using A/B/O differently, I mean, not only is this different in that it’s werewolf that uses A/B/O, they’re also using A/B/O differently than A/B/O is normally used.

DARKWICCAN : Right, it is a different angle on the standard A/B/O trope. There are heats, there are ruts, but as we mentioned, female Alphas do not grow anything extra in rut to aid in progeny.

DELAYNE : My note says: “Interesting take on the reproductive system”. So, is that where you’re going with this?

DARKWICCAN : A little bit, I mean, the thing is, so we’ve got A/B/O, that’s fine, whatever, and it’s actually sort of an afterthought, it feels like to me, like “oh yeah, and so-and-so’s an Alpha, and so-and-so’s an Omega, moving on”, y'know? It’s doesn’t –

DELAYNE : Yeah, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - seem that really big of, like it’s a big deal and that’s fine. They do make a point, RogueTiger makes a point of making it clear that female Alphas have a very difficult time conceiving children. And female Alphas cannot – with exceptions – female Alphas generally cannot, y'know, impregnate another female, and certainly not a male, that’s not happening. But what’s interesting here is that because Nicole is a – oh, okay, well first of all, one thing we’ve kind of skipped over, or maybe I didn’t, I don’t recall at this point, we’ve been on the A/B/O topic for a while. But one thing that’s interesting is that in this universe werewolves are born, not made.

DELAYNE : Yes, that’s kind of important to this whole reproductive talk.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s seriously important. So it’s not – you don’t become a werewolf by being bitten, you are either born human, or you’re born a werewolf, or you’re born some other mythological creature. So that’s important, and Nicole’s character’s bloodline, wolf bloodline, is very old and very pure. And as a result –

DELAYNE : Supposedly extinct.

DARKWICCAN : Supposedly extinct at the time that the storyline starts. And so as a result she has an ability that has largely, or almost entirely, been lost to female Alpha wolves. She does have the ability to impregnate another female, a female omega. And she doesn’t do this with a phallus, she has other –

DELAYNE : Means.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. [laughter] Which I guess you just have to read about. This is rated Explicit, it is an Explicit fic, but we don’t have a whole lot – I will say there are entire chapters dedicated to – um – relations of that nature, but really, y'know, it’s a handful out of one hundred and fifty-eight chapters. So it’s not something that happens constantly, it’s just something that happens kind of as naturally would in a committed relationship like you have with Waverly and Nicole here.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : I think we’ve talked about that enough, what do you think?

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Let’s move on to other bits of werewolf mythology that RogueTiger has utilized or created.

DELAYNE : Yeah. My other note is, after “wolves being born not bitten” is that it’s described – well, Nicole, herself, is like internally thinking. It’s chapter four, and it’s one of my favorites, is Nicole just going on about werewolf mythology in her own head, like how they’re different, and they’re describing, there’s a man beast, but you know, they’re floppier and cuter that the slavering creature that’s depicted in Hollywood, so.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, yeah, there’s that, and also there’s different types of wolf form that werewolves can morph into depending on their strength, and power, and ability, and also depending on the moon phase.

DELAYNE : Okay. Yeah, so I mean in werewolf mythology in total, y'know outside of what we’re talking about now, like there is the gamut of bitten or not bitten, of turning into a wolf, turning into some hybrid creature, and everything in between. And, y'know this one sort encompasses more of those variations than it’s all one or the other.

DARKWICCAN : It really is just, it really is in this universe that RogueTiger’s writing for, it really is just the werewolves are born, but the mythology – the folklore still exists, and that’s what I think Nicole is complaining about, right?

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, she’s complaining about the folklore. And it’s also interesting that the werewolves in this storyline can take different forms, as I said before, they can take different forms depending on the lunar phase, and also depending on their inherent power. So the wolves can turn into, they can go from human to wolf form at any time of the month, but that form is more just a very big wolf, like a natural wolf, like, ugh, I can’t believe I’m actually using this as a reference –

DELAYNE : It’s Twilight. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : [mutters] Twilight.

DELAYNE : Twilight.

DARKWICCAN : Ugh. But I’m just calling on that for the visuals –

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - okay, not for any sort of, yeah. Whereas, on the full moon, they take more the traditional shape that we think of from Hollywood, where they are basically a sort of hybrid of wolf and man, but also monstrous in size and they walk on hind legs, they don’t walk on y'know four legs. Yeah, it’s that sort of traditional sort of [laughter] that particular image of a werewolf is what they become on the full moon. But, someone, a wolf of particular strength and power can take that shape any time, and of course Nicole falls into that category and she is really kind of one of a kind, in being able to do that.

DELAYNE : That seems appropriate, Nicole is one of a kind, I will definitely say yes to that.

DARKWICCAN : Another thing that wolves of particular strength can do is they actually force other wolves to change form.

DELAYNE : Oh, yeah. That was –

DARKWICCAN : And that, that’s usually used as a tactic of intimidation. Because if you can – ‘cause apparently it’s supposed to be very painful for someone else to force a change on another wolf – but not always. That’s actually a point of bonding for Waverly and Nicole, where Waverly has always disliked her form on the wolf moon, she finds it uncomfortable to change, because it’s not change that she’s in control of, it’s a change that’s brought on by the lunar cycle itself. And Nicole helps her through it by carefully and gently drawing her wolf out, instead of it just being something that’s forced upon her by the moon. So I thought that was kind of, aw, that’s a nice bonding, kinda sweet thing.

DELAYNE : I did make a note, “I don’t think I would enjoy a telepathic connection”.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : That’s right! Because they’re soul-bonded and mark-bonded, right, ‘cause they bit each other’s throats so they took on each other’s marks. That’s another carry-over from A/B/O. They can communicate with each other telepathically, which again is unusual, so there’s a lot of stuff that Waverly and Nicole are able to do, or things that rather Nicole is able to do, that is even unusual amongst y'know wolf folk, as it stands in this storyline.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : And it is a sprawling storyline, I mean, we’re talking a hundred and fifty-eight chapters at this point, as I mentioned earlier, they start off kind of canon-adjacent, running along with season one of the show –

DELAYNE : “Running along”, sorry, I got the visual where they all go out for a run. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter] Yeah, that is one thing I really liked, they do have packs, and Wynonna is the alpha and leader of the wolf pack in Purgatory, which I think is great. The title sort of gives away a little bit of something, “Lone Wolf”, Nicole sort of comes into town, doesn’t even reveal her wolfy nature, she has skillsets that allow her to mask her wolf. And so it takes a while – although Waverly catches on pretty quick.

DELAYNE : Oh yeah. She’s like, “I know what you do, I met you in the woods and totally just walked right up to you, and like scented you”. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : But, yeah, there is so much storyline to dig into that it’s really, quite honestly impossible to try to cover even half of it, even in a summary type way, it’s just too much. But I will say that if you find yourself, y'know, on a long flight and you need to fill the time, “Lone Wolf” is a good choice. It’s decently written, it’s engaging, it has a lot of really fun ideas. They bring other fandoms into play, RogueTiger has introduced the ClexaKru into the storyline, and in a way that makes sense, and works in this universe. And, yeah, there’s just so much going on, and so many mythological creatures that RogueTiger brings into play to kind of keep the ball rolling. And, yeah, they’re still going, they’re still going, so, y'know, it’s definitely entertaining, and I’ve certainly enjoyed it. It is Explicit, I’ll throw that out there once again, it does follow some elements of A/B/O, but not others, and, yeah.

DELAYNE : I think there – we could say more, but I think let’s keep going.

DARKWICCAN : We could say more, but we’ve got another fic to talk about.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Exactly.

DARKWICCAN : So the second fic we’re talking about today, second and final fic, is “when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls” by deathrae. And this is another epic tale, it is seventy-two chapters, and it’s completed. It is over two hundred and seventy-six thousand words and, my goodness, what words. It’s so beautiful. Oh, gosh, it’s such a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful story. It’s so well written. I love this fiction so much.

DELAYNE : Uh, er, ah, listen to me stumble all over my words because I don’t have the words to say how much I enjoyed this fic.

DARKWICCAN : Similar to “Lone Wolf” only in that it is canon-adjacent, and it runs along seasons one and two. And that’s really – and also there’s the werewolf element, but deathrae has taken a more sort of traditional approach to how werewolves are created. In this case it is from a bite, and at the start of the story we learn that Shae is a werewolf, and after Nicole has fallen and injured her shoulder, and been given the –

DELAYNE : Thiopental.

DARKWICCAN : - thiopental at the hospital, and is having a massive allergic reaction, she bites Nicole in an effort to save her life. Now, we learn more about –

DELAYNE : Background of that.

DARKWICCAN : - what drove her to make that decision, yeah, later, about mid-way point – well, yeah, little less than mid-way through – no – yeah – little less than mid-way through. [laughter] We learn more about why Shae made that decision, but Shae basically bites Nicole, and makes Nicole a werewolf as well, and Nicole has struggles coming to terms with this change in her life.

DELAYNE : Yeah, and I like how it’s presented, y'know, this dream backstory and then we’re right there in canon. Yeah, one of my first notes, “I am already in love with this fic”. So within the first chapter, like, I knew, I am all in for this fic.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] So was it love at first bite?

DELAYNE : [laughter] Yes. [laughter] Taken by surprise, that was fantastic. Kudos to you. [claps] [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Thank you. So, Delayne, what stood out for you in this story? What caught your attention? You say you fell in love in the first chapter. What about this story got your attention and held onto it?

DELAYNE : I really like, even from the beginning, Nicole’s werewolf senses. So when she first introduces herself to Waverly in that canon scene, she smells her anxiety, and perhaps interest. So, like… ugh. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Mnah, what exactly are you smelling there, Nicole? Haw haw haw haw.

DELAYNE : [laughter] And, of course, throughout the whole fic the way that scent is described and the way Nicole can even smell, she has smells associated with emotions, so I mean not just being able to this person always smells like this, and this person always smells like this, but the changes of those smells, then she knows what they’re feeling. And then her own emotions have, y'know, everything has smells and I guess I have a weird obsession with scent, because back when we did the A/B/Os I think I – I don’t know if we ever discussed it, but I made a lot of notes about smelling things.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, there’s a lot tied to sense memory, y'know, a smell can take you back to a place and a time, or a moment, so that makes a lot of sense. And also it makes double sense for scent to be such an integral part of Nicole’s character and how she experiences the world now, because she does have that heightened sense of smell, courtesy of the wolf. I will note that this story does not have A/B/O elements, at all. I kind of think it’s important to point that out, since that was an element of “Lone Wolf” that is not an element within this storyline. And what I found really interesting is whereas in “Lone Wolf’ we start off with, again, since werewolves in that world are born, not made, there’s no sort of internal struggle between the human aspect and the wolf aspect.

DELAYNE : Right.

DARKWICCAN : They’re in co-operation from the outset. Whereas in this story - it’s actually part of a little series, “The Moonsinger Chronicles” – but within this story by deathrae there is that battle between the wolf and the human side. And there is that internal struggle, and the fact that Nicole really almost hates what she’s been turned into by Shae. Because it, y'know, she doesn’t trust this creature, what is part of herself, but she really feels like it’s a separate, y'know, she’s not allowing it to become one with her, she’s just like, “no, no, you stay over there, I’ll stay over here” so it’s like, “you get your time of the month, and then I get, y'know, the rest of the time to kind of ignore the fact that you’re around”. And so there is that internal push-pull that I found really, really interesting -

DELAYNE : It really allows the other –

DARKWICCAN : - going on there.

DELAYNE : - character study, like, y'know, how does a person deal with their inner bad self.  That’s not even the right word. Yeah, just dealing with a part of them that they aren’t okay with.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s sort of another take on the whole devil on the shoulder, angel on the shoulder, kind of situation, I think. Where Nicole sort of views this wolf part of her as sort of the devil on her shoulder, and she doesn’t really want to acknowledge it, or give it any power. So she’s always doing her best to – and the thing I think that just speaks to who Nicole is, generally, wolf or no wolf – she is always trying to do the right thing, and listen to her better angels, and now she just happens to have this rather loud beast in her left ear kind of going “hellooo”.

DELAYNE : [howls] [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : [howls] “You can’t ignore me!”

DELAYNE : And she doesn’t exactly have the best example as her maker, and…

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, Shae is a bad guy. Which, I mean, that’s fine, but, here’s the thing, Shae is the hero of her own story, right?

DELAYNE : Yes. Very much so.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, she’s got her agenda, she knows what her end game is, y'know, she knows why she’s making the choices she’s making, because she knows what goal she’s ultimately trying to pull off. And y'know she’s one of those types of individuals who if you get in her way, she’s gonna mow you over to keep going. Or she’s going to use you in some way, as a tool. And so, yeah, y'know it’s one of those things where I liked this Shae because she wasn’t the stereotypical bad ex. You know what I mean?

DELAYNE : Right.

DARKWICCAN : She was –

DELAYNE : The bad guy.

DARKWICCAN : - the bad ex for an entirely unique and different reason.

DELAYNE : Oh, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : But one thing that I also like is that deathrae plays around with the idea of the Cult of Bulshar, and how Nicole’s family relates to that, as there has been speculation within the fandom, and kind of, since the end of season two.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So she sort of plays around with that idea, and yeah, again, this is running canon adjacent, so everything that happens in the series, with minor tweaks here and there to accommodate the whole werewolf angle.

DELAYNE : It’s so expertly done, when you have a scene you’re like, how is this even going to work, deathrae did some amazing things to make it work.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, really, really they did, and the – I tell you what, the scene in the hospital from episode 210, when Shae shows up? Oh, my – I was on the edge of my seat.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : I was on the edge of my seat, I was like, “What is going to happen, because Shae is so dangerous! What’s going to happen?”

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : And, yeah, it was so – ugh! [laughter] It was so intense and scary. Because Waverly doesn’t know how dangerous Shae is, y'know -

DELAYNE : Oh, she quickly learns. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : - at the beginning. She figures it out quick, but yeah, she doesn’t know at the beginning, so you’re know at the beginning so you’re just sitting there as the audience and we’re going, “Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, what’s going to happen?” So, yeah, it was so good, and just the amount of work that deathrae must have done to develop and build off of traditional mythologies, and creating their own sort of takes on that, and world-building. ‘Cause even though, y'know, again, we’re running adjacent to an established series, there’s still world-building that needs to happen, because we have to incorporate the werewolf mythology into this existing storyline. So, also they work in other mythological creatures as well.

DELAYNE : Right? I did enjoy that there’s a couple chapters where we take a break from canon, and just do a whole different sort of monster of the week.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : Fricking fantastic.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, ‘cause that was really something that was missing from season two, because it kind of had to be missing, right?

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : We didn’t have, we didn’t really have monsters of the week. We sort of did at the top of the season, but then once we got to the pregnancy reveal that was the core focus from then on. And then we had that one like evil doll from a painting, but that doesn’t really count. [laughter] ‘Cause it was handled so easily, it’s just like, oh bullet to the face, ceramic face, we’re good. Didn’t really cause any sort of true havoc, y'know, we’re fine. [laughter] But, yeah, so it was really fun to kind of have a couple of monsters of the week to play with, that was a lot of fun. So I know you’ve got a lot of notes that you’ve got down there, Delayne, is there anything else that you wanted to touch on before we do our completely seamless Segway?

DELAYNE : [laughter] The best way to write deflated without writing deflated was: “”Oh,” Nicole said, feeling a bit like a week old balloon.”

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] So what you’re telling me is that you like deathrae’s turn of phrase?

DELAYNE : Oh, my gosh, absolutely.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, definitely, the writing in this story is tremendous and nigh on impeccable. Y'know, as happens, there are of course gonna be little typographical errors here and there, but nothing that you can’t look past easily, because the majority of the writing – really the writing just overall is so, so good. It’s just such excellent work, you know? [laughter] And I’m particularly curious about some of the choices that deathrae made as they were writing this. I would love to pick deathrae’s brain a little bit, and fortunately we’re going to be able to do that today, because I cornered deathrae at Clexacon, and I said, “hey, you wanna be on the show?” and they said, “um, um, yeah okay”, so –

[laughter]

DELAYNE : “I guess.”

DARKWICCAN : “I guess, if I have to.”

DELAYNE : You met well, so many more people at Clexacon than I did, I don’t know if I talked to some people, I don’t even know…

DARKWICCAN : Well, but you did end up hanging out with a few authors, though –

DELAYNE : I did.

DARKWICCAN : - ended up going to breakfast with somebody, yeah. So, I mean, the thing is you had other things going on at Clexacon besides just Clexacon.

DELAYNE : Yeah, that’s true.

DARKWICCAN : So, whereas my wife and I where there to go to Clexacon, so. [laughter] So that was our number one thing that we had going on. But yeah, so like I said, I convinced deathrae to come on the show, maybe against their better judgment, so they are joining us for the second segment today. But before we can get to that, of course we must –

DELAYNE : Must.

DARKWICCAN : - must, needs must introduce this week’s [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Confronting the Ram by Gareth Coker

DARKWICCAN : And welcome back everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we are so excited to have with us today the amazing, and talented, and wonderful author of the incredible epic “when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls”: deathrae, who we’ll be calling Alex today. Alex, welcome to the show.

ALEX : Hey. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Hey.

ALEX : Glad to be here.

DARKWICCAN : Well, we’re happy to have you here, thank you so much. I tell you what, this is probably, I’d say your story is the best werewolf AU I’ve read in the Wynonna Earp fanfiction world.

ALEX : Oh, thank you.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : How about ever? Of course I haven’t read a lot of other werewolf fanfiction myself, but oh, my gosh, this is so good.

DARKWICCAN : It is really good, y'know, I’ve read some pretty excellent werewolf fanfiction for other fandoms, which is why I’m kind of saying within the Wynonna Earp fandom. But I don’t know, maybe if I were to like really sit down and think about it, and like set these other werewolf AUs up against this one, maybe this one would dominate. I think it might, I think it might.

DELAYNE : Dominate. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Dominate!

[laughter]

ALEX : Oh, man, thank you.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, well we’re just speaking the truth, y'know, that’s what we do around here. We tell the truth, but in a flattering way.

[laughter]

ALEX : Right.

DARKWICCAN : So Alex, y'know I gotta ask you the question that we always start off with: how did you get involved in fanfiction?

ALEX : I kind of came to fanfiction – well, I won’t say backward, because of course there’s like a million paths to get there. Like in high school and middle school I wrote mostly original fiction, like novels, a screenplay I think when I was like fifteen. And only in college, when I got so busy that I kind of stopped reading books, which is lethal to your career as a writer –

DELAYNE : Oh, that happened to me too, yes.

ALEX : Yeah, I stopped reading books and got into a lot of T.V., and movies, and videogames, and discovered fanfiction that way. And it kind of became my way of like doodling, and getting warmed up to write. It started out with mostly just like character vignettes, I didn’t really do narratives, which seems ironic now, looking back on it, given what this became. ‘Cause I’ve never done anything of this scope before. A couple short stories, but most of what I wrote was like for _Dragon Age_ , and _Kingdom Hearts_ , and it was just goofy character studies, and nothing like this. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : _Kingdom Hearts_ the videogame?

ALEX : Yeah. Yeah.

DELAYNE : You didn’t know that was a big – that’s a pretty big fandom, actually.

DARKWICCAN : Well, I – I –

DELAYNE : It’s big enough that I know about it, even though I don’t know much about it, I know it is big enough that –

DARKWICCAN : Well, I know it’s popular because y'know I go to comic conventions all over the place and I see quite a few people dressed up as _Kingdom Hearts_ characters at conventions, and cosplay, and things like that, so I know it’s a thing, I just didn’t realize it was that big of a thing.

ALEX : It’s a hell of a thing, it’s like sixteen years running, it ‘s got like seven or eight games in the franchise so it’s huge. It keeps getting more complicated.

DARKWICCAN : Nice. Nice, nice. But jumping back from _Kingdom Hearts_ to _Wynonna Earp_ , how did you get wrapped up in _Wynonna Earp_?

ALEX : I was working a job last May where I was working ten hour shifts on weekends, and Monday-Tuesday, and I frequently had nothing to do, ‘cause it was basically a call center, and I had lots of free time especially on Saturday and Sunday, right when season one hit Netflix. And I went, alright, this seems kind of up my alley, I like urban fantasy, I like y'know – okay well I’ll be honest, I found it with all the gifts of Waverly and Nicole, of course – went alright, this seems my speed, gave it a shot, watched it in I think like three days. And that was pretty much the end of it. And because season two was coming out right after that hit I didn’t have to wait very long.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

ALEX : Which in some ways was probably a bad thing. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, ‘cause now you’re waiting for season three going “My god! What is taking so long.”

ALEX : Exactly. Exactly. Like, finished season one, I had like maybe two weeks and like I didn’t have cable so I just watched it on iTunes, and so like Saturday morning, right after it went live on iTunes, I would watch it at work and then would show it to a couple of my friends when I got home, and so by the time I started “wolves” I’d probably watched season two like three times, all told. It was a little ridiculous. So I knew the narrative really well going into this project.

DARKWICCAN : Wow, yeah, no kidding. What attracted you to the idea of having Nicole be a werewolf, which is a relatively popular notion within the fandom?

ALEX : Yeah, I’d seen a couple of the like theory posts, and I discovered where someone was going “oh, if she’s going to be a supernatural creature, I bet she’s going to be a werewolf” and at the time I was like, “Oh, but I mean all these qualities make sense. She’s a cop, of course she’s perceptive, and defensive, and protective of people, and all that kind of stuff”, and then I read several other of the kind of in progress werewolf stories that were out there, and was like these are good, I’m enjoying these, but oh man, I would love to do my own spin on it, and what if it had been true the whole time? Which of course became the core conceit of “wolves”, was well what if she had always been one, instead of like becoming one half way through. What if she was from the very beginning, and let’s just see what that does to the whole story. And, y'know, famous last words, because then I did. But, yeah, I wanted to see what it would look like that had always been true, instead of it being a story of her getting bitten while on the job with like Wynonna and Dolls. So.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, it was – yes. Delayne, take it.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : I feel the same, DW, I feel the same. Yeah, I am curious about your monster research, ‘cause I have done a little bit of research myself into werewolf mythos for my own, y'know, non-fanfic related writing. So what was like the most important part of – ‘cause there’s, as I told DW, there’s more than one way to skin a werewolf. [laughter] Where was your focus, what was your research, what other mythos, and why you made the choices that you made on how you chose to show the type of werewolf that Nicole is?

ALEX : Actually a lot of it comes from dissatisfaction with other werewolf stories. ‘Cause, I mean, I’ve always loved werewolves, I love wolf kind of pack dynamics, and how they behave, and love dogs, whole nine yard, but I see a lot of werewolf fiction, like, not to call out the _Harry Potter_ movies, but I hated how they did Lupin in the third movie. To me, I was like, that’s not a werewolf, that’s no, I wanna see, y'know, _Wolfman_ , _Van Helsing_ -style like hulking monsters. And –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

ALEX : - like, you gotta embrace that, it’s like, ugh, yeah, Lupin was awful, but so I am very much like I wanna see the – it’s a werewolf, embrace the monstrousness of it when it’s a wolf form, because that’s the whole, point, right, is the contrast between what they’re like as a human being, and how they approach the curse, which is kind of mirrored in Shae versus Nicole, right, because they both have this situation but they approach it very differently. And so you have the human side and you have the wolf side, and if it doesn’t look like a wolf, then what’s the point?

So a lot of the werewolf mythos is really hard to pin down, there’s so many different versions of it, which actually is kind of something that I had Waverly talk about in like, chapter twelve, when she’s talking about the themes of like vampires versus werewolves versus zombies. And that’s – I love the duality of werewolf myths, and I really wanted to drill down into that, and I don’t see that very much. A lot of commercial werewolf fiction doesn’t really – usually there’s another factors in it that I dislike that I don’t really give it a chance, which isn’t fair, but I don’t read a lot of werewolf literature, and so a lot of what I see is just, ugh, this doesn’t really get into the themes that I like, lemme go ahead and just drill down into it.

And as far as the research, a lot of it comes from stuff I already knew. Like I said, I love urban fantasy, vampire, werewolf, and adjacent shape shifters, and everything else, I love that stuff, and so some of them I knew about, some of them were new. The cicada, the shape shifting voice mimic creature, that I’d never heard of before I wrote this, actually, I was like –

DELAYNE : Yeah, I had to Google that one too.

ALEX : - yeah, I did some extensive Wikipedia browsing, and was like looking at just indexes of kinds of monster, of like oh what could they encounter here, because, y'know, it’s _Wynonna Earp_ , so throw in your monster of the week. And it was kind of fun in that way, blending the stuff I did know, like vampires especially, although I took sort of licenses with what vampires are, given how the whole thing worked out, but a lot of it, yeah, was just kind of taking the stuff that I like from other pieces of fiction and kind of blending them together. And drawing off stuff that I’ve seen recently too, I think there was, what it is, the doll hand, I actually was kind of pulling from _Lost Girl_ to just keep it within the family. ‘Cause there’s that whole episode.

DELAYNE : Yeah. [laughter] I recognize some of these from _Lost Girl_ , that’s where I was like oh, huh, hey.

ALEX : Yeah, yeah, that one, I think I make references to them like three times, but you never see one in “wolves”, which, y'know, oh well. But yeah, I love that stuff. So some of it was research, but some of it’s just aggregates, and just alright I’ve been thinking about this stuff for years, let’s just throw it in and see what happens. So it was a good time.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and that is one thing, like you were saying, there are so many different versions of the werewolf myth that is actually possible for you to – there’s a lot of flexibility and lee-way as you go. As long as you have sort of familiar touchstones to the myth that most of us are most basically familiar with, which is you get bit by a werewolf, you become a werewolf, on the night of full moon you turn into a werewolf, wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf, y'know? It’s kind of like what we get, y'know?

ALEX : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : And y'know you can pull other things like wolfsbane, and all that other y'know, as a deterrent, and silver, blah, blah, blah, blah, but really everything else is fair game, like however you wanna, y'know, play with it.

ALEX : Yeah, which I actually saw firsthand, because I was getting frankly absolutely mind-blowing reader response as I was doing the first chapters, I really wasn’t expecting that, but seeing what people were, like the questions people would ask as the first ten chapter were rolling out, like “Oh is this how it’s gonna be?” and I was like, I didn’t realize there was quite this much flex, but apparently there is because I’m going in a completely different direction than all you guys think. I’ll see if you’re still here in five chapters when I reveal it, but, cool, okay, and just kinda kept going. And it was really interesting how many different places it could have gone, really. I mean, at the beginning I – frankly the storyline where she gets to a point of – she being Nicole – gets to a point of synergy with – that was unplanned.

DARKWICCAN : Really?

ALEX : Yes. [laughter] Because I find those narratives to be kind of defeating the point, when I see them in other places. When I see that storyline of like, oh, they get to a point of – well, then why did you even have the wolf in the first place, because this whole – the point is that they’re in conflict, right? It’s that dueling side of you. I find werewolves to be a kind of beautiful, not parallel, but metaphor for… that part of you that you’re ashamed of. Y'know, everyone can be toxic, right, we have this language against toxic friends, well, everybody can be that, everyone is that at some point, and what do you do with that? What do you do with that aspect of yourself when you see it, when you realize, oh man, I was a jerk?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah.

ALEX : I’m bad people, oh god, what do I do now? And some people lock that up in a cage and feel bad about it, and some people go, “well, that’s just me, this is who I am” and move forward. And so I love the whole werewolf concept as kind of talking about that, and so having that storyline of like, and then they come to peace with it, it’s like, well, but, is that realistic, is that reasonable to think that you’re gonna, like that’s the only way to live out your life, is to come to peace with it? And so every time I’ve seen that narrative I didn’t like it, so for like fifty chapters I was like nope, she’s gonna be at odds with her until the very end, like that’s, I wanna keep that element of that, the fight, and then it was like I was getting deeper, and no, it can’t stay there, it has to do something else, it has to grow because, yeah, otherwise there’s nowhere for her to go, there’s no arch for her to have.

DELAYNE : It has to be reconciled.

ALEX : And I’ve laid so much ground for this without even realizing it, like going back and like the chapter that’s from Mikshun’s perspective -

DARKWICCAN : Right.

ALEX : - of the demon taunting the wolf, it was like oh, I’ve been laying the pieces of this for weeks and I didn’t even realize that I was setting myself up for this to be the only logical place for this to go. And I’m glad, because it turned out really well, but yeah, that was not how I thought the story was gonna go, at all.

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha. Well sometimes, y'know, characters are making decisions for us in the background as we’re writing, y'know, some part of our subconscious is influencing these characters to make decisions and choices and they sort of, it feels like they’re writing themselves, and suddenly they take a turn down an alley where you weren’t expecting, and you’re like, well, I guess we’re going this way, okay, let’s see what happens.

ALEX : Yeah, very much so.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. But speaking of characters taking a turn, you opted to make Shae a villainous character in this story, but you also have her save Nicole’s life by turning her into a werewolf in the first place. So what motivation, sort of beyond what we see on the page, or on the screen, drove your Shae to behave as she did?

ALEX : Oh, Shae is a – ugh – Shae was the hardest call that I made. Because, I mean, as you can probably tell from having read the story, I changed almost nothing, that was sort of the point, right, was like everything in the show stays the same. Making –

DELAYNE : I was wondering how we were gonna – when we got to Shae’s scene, I was like, how is this gonna play out? And I don’t know, I was on edge.

ALEX : Well good, I succeeded. But yeah, I mean like the whole point was like, no, everything’s the same, I’m just re-contextualizing it. I’m putting it in a new light, right? But something that I love about Shae in the show is that she’s not a villain. She presents a problem that Waverly and Nicole have to overcome and deal with, but Shae in and of herself is not a villain, she’s a three dimensional character.

I love that about her in the show, so making her a villain in the story was kind of like, oh, I feel bad, because I’m kind of like giving you a bad rap, and I don’t wanna do that to you, but also I’m totally gonna do that to you. And I think Shae becomes that most interesting in this context because she’s so complicated that she, y'know, like I said, there’s so many parallels that I’m drawing between the two of them, and how different they are with when they were bitten, and how they handled it, and a lot of Shae comes back to her taking control of her own life, and she’s in this circumstance both in terms of having been bitten at like fifteen, and then her getting involved with the Cult.

She is in this spot where it seems like she’s never in control of her own life, and a lot of what she does is ultimately about taking control back, that y'know, yes we find out half way through that Nicole’s dad told Shae to bite her, but I – kind of looking back on it, and reexamining Shae’s behavior from the lens of having finished the story, I think she treated Nicole the way she did in part to deliberately push her away, to set Nicole on a collision course with the Cult. So her goal was always to get out from underneath the Cult, and get what she wanted, and the best path she saw was to basically take the demon away from Mr. Haught.

And so a lot of her behavior is about getting to that point, of being able to say, nope, I beat you to it, I’ve put myself in this position where I’m the one acting on your behalf so that then I can backstab you. But a lot of it had to do with what tools she had, and one of her biggest tools, which kind of makes her a lot like McKyle, was Nicole. And she used Nicole against the Cult just as much as he did, y'know, in a lot of ways, actually.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah.

ALEX : Whoops. Oops, did I do that. [laughter] Did I set that up? Oh well.

DELAYNE : Just talking to you, just, we’re not even finished here yet and this has made me more in love with this story. So, yeah, Nicole’s werewolf senses. Wow, you are really good at describing the smells, especially for stuff like emotions, so, what went into figuring out what emotions smelt like, I guess? What was that process?

ALEX : [laughter] Oh, man, I’m so glad you asked, because I love talking about this subject. A lot of her senses are very much a tool. And that sounds kind of utilitarian, but it’s true. Everything that she senses in the story is about getting – conveying the story to the reader. And kind of to that end, just like the scents of emotions are meant to be very poetic and phonetic. And so like, I think toward the end, she describes hope as smelling like thread catching fire. And where that comes from is that hope, as a concept, right, is a light in the darkness, like a candle.

DELAYNE : Ah.

ALEX : Yeah. And I think in that same section, I think that’s when Waverly’s talking to Dolls, and she says here –

DELAYNE : Yeah, they’re having a conversation. I was surprised to see they’re actually having a conversation about it.

ALEX : Yes, which I kind of love that moment, because it implies that Nicole actually says this stuff that like otherwise is an internal monologue, and so presumably the other characters don’t know, and it’s like, no, no, she totally has these conversations, she exactly as ridiculously poetic about it when she’s chatting with someone, as when she internal monologues, which is an aspect of Nicole I kind of love.

But she also describes fear as smelling like pre-dawn frost and chain link fence in the dark, yeah, which was meant to evoke that feeling of if you’re by yourself at like four in the morning, walking through a city, and you’re scared to death because you don’t know what’s around you, it’s dark, it’s gloomy, it’s kind of creepy: that feeling is what fear is, to me. And so a lot of these things come from me, because I joke about this a lot, but I have a weirdly intense sense of smell.

But yeah, I pick up a lot of that. Smell in the world around me is very important to how I perceive werewolves, I guess, which I guess comes across. But she, I imagine that she, being a werewolf, can actually pin down the difference between the two is that she can pin down what it is she’s smelling.

But, yeah, it always about how do I convey this image, or this theme to the reader through how she experiences the world. And emotions are just fun, because y'know humans can’t smell emotion, but they do have pheromones and chemicals attached to them. So they would presumably have a smell, and well, why wouldn’t a werewolf be able to pick up on it, y'know?

It’s just kind of, part of it’s just fun, at that point, but yeah, it was always meant to be very much about theme.

DARKWICCAN : So you obviously give a lot of thought to all of these very key details, both of minutia and the majora of Nicole, and her abilities, and her also just sort of moral center, and who she is at her core, as a character. So I have to ask if Nicole’s inherent goodness and nobility influence Honey to be a good wolf? Would Honey be more like Shae’s wolf, if given half a chance?

ALEX : Hmm. I think it’s kind of a cycle. Something that I would love to drill down deeper into, especially if I ever turn this into an original story, is that element of the wolf spirits as being Apollo’s messengers. And so I think they do, the wolves ultimately come from a place that is good, and that’s kind of shown in things that McKyle says about the inherent nature of a werewolf not being hell. But it’s kind of, because of the nature of it being the werewolf curse, y'know, this kind of possession that happens is sort of coming under duress, I know the relationship between host and wolf is so adversarial from the very beginning that each party has a big impact on each other.

I think Honey is always a good wolf, but it’s that Nicole is good that there’s room for Honey to be the best that she can be. And that it becomes a spiral where because Honey is better, she can help make Nicole better. But it would be so easy for someone who was not that good, like Shae, to have a negative influence on the wolf. And so it’s kind of complicated, because it’s so symbiotic and cyclical that it’s hard to say, and that was kind of something that I wanted to be true, is that it’s both of them at the time. And they kind of both influence each other and make each other better.

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha.

ALEX : But only once they’ve realized they can, because obviously they spend most of the story in conflict, believing that the other is kind of the worst part of them, to a degree.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, that’s something I hadn’t considered, that the wolf would consider the human aspect to be the shameful part.

ALEX : Mhm. I think in a lot ways –

DELAYNE : Honey lone, man. [laughter]

ALEX : I think in many ways Honey sees Nicole as holding her back, especially in the beginning. A lot of what she does – and something that’s kind of, it’s very hidden under layers of text, I’m not even sure that it would be evident on a re-read – is like, ‘cause it’s implied later that Nicole got to a point where she had learned, “oh, I can make these concessions, I can make these compromises, and then you’ll do what I want”.

But then she also doesn’t really follow through, like she, the implication, from very zoomed out, is that she basically said, “yeah, alright, the full moon can be yours, be we have to be cool the rest of the month”, only then she gets the cage. And so she still didn’t trust the wolf then, she didn’t trust Honey to hold up her end of the bargain. And so from Honey’s perspective, Nicole was kind of reneging on their deal, and won’t trust her, and won’t give her any space to be who she is.

And so they’re, like both sides kind of have points, right, because that frustration and that –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, wow

ALEX : - that hunger was there, like I’m never gonna say that Honey wouldn’t have killed somebody. Like, if they had been running around at the full moon from the very beginning, I will never promise you that Nicole would never killed somebody. Because that’s what werewolves are, that is a part of a mythos I find very compelling.

So, no, they were so adversarial and that conflict was making them so just fraught with tension that it becomes harder for Honey to be, back to the original phrasing, for her to be good. But only when they start to kind of find their common ground, through Waverly, and realize, oh, there’s ways for us to work together, we’re never gonna fully agree on how, but we can get to this point of understanding each other a little bit better, maybe we can work with this, that helps both of them continue climbing and getting better and better all the time.

DELAYNE : One of my favorite scenes is when Waverly gives Nicole the perfect opportunity to come out as a werewolf, and I know I had so many instances when I was in my coming out story where there was like perfect opportunities, but I always talked myself out of it. So do you feel that Nicole’s, y'know, wolf identity and her secret, is it paralleling the experience of queer people in small towns, if that’s what you were going for, or…?

ALEX : It definitely does parallel. Not deliberately, though. I would say it comes subconsciously, because, of course, y'know, we’re all watching _Wynonna Earp_ , how many of us are not queer, right?

But no, it definitely, no, it was not on purpose. It was one of the most happy accidents of this story, because absolutely it does. I mean I – I – thank you, because I was really worried about it, actually, at the time, I was worried that Nicole’s reasoning for not just saying it would come off as really like, “oh , you’ve gotta be kidding me, just say it”, so I’m really glad that that scene kinda played as compelling.

But yeah, absolutely, I did same thing. I, a hundred percent, I had, y'know, even now I’ll have conversations where it’s like, this is my perfect opportunity, but I’m not ready for that, and so I can’t say it. And looking back on the story it’s kind of like how could it possibly not have been on purpose, right? ‘Cause like there’s even that joke in like chapter five, or something, where she says something about “pretty sure it doesn’t even have a gay bar, why do you think that like, there’s a supernatural bars for them to be able to find and get into”, when she’s talking to Dolls.

And I mean, kind of going back to something I said earlier, it’s like I find the werewolf theme very illustrative of that kind of inherent monstrousness, and I think I would never want to compare being queer to being a monster because of course, that’s not true. But definitely there is still, I mean, it’s 2018, but there’s still that pressure and that societal expectation that we kind of feel that way, a lot of us feel that way. Y'know, especially as teenagers, I think, like a lot of us, I think, still kind of have that feeling of like, oh my god, I’m not normal, I’m not like everybody around me, I’m something horrible and different.

DELAYNE : And hide, yeah.

ALEX : So, yeah, absolutely I think it parallels. I wish it didn’t, ultimately, I really wish I could say, no, don’t be silly, but it does, it absolutely does, that feeling of hiding, that feeling of like no-one’s going to accept me for who I am, and then finding those people and going: “Oh. Oh, there are people who get it, there are people like me, like maybe I don’t have to hide all of it”. Which actually, in hindsight is kind of a beautiful thing that comes out of all the crazy jokes that Wynonna makes, y'know? Like, how much research did I do finding famous dog names, but no, it’s at the same time, y'know, she in her very Wynonna way accepts Nicole, and that’s kind of a big deal. And both in the –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ALEX : - monstrousness aspect, the y'know feeling like you’re a bad person thing, but also a giant metaphor for being queer, yeah, absolutely. It did end up being kind of perfect, even if it was totally not deliberate, so, I’ll take it.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Awesome.

DELAYNE : Oh, wow.

DARKWICCAN : So, Alex, you’ve continued this universe in your “b-sides” collection, that showcases missing scenes from the original storyline. Well, season three is dawning upon us: any plans to continue this universe into the future, once season three begins to air?

ALEX : [sharp intake of breath] I feel so – I get this question a lot, and I feel so bad. ‘Cause here’s the thing: a lot of people have asked for a sequel, and I don’t think I’ll be able to do a sequel. And why I say that is, the whole point of “wolves” as it is, right, was to be, well, what if the show was exactly the same. Well, a lot of the things that I was building on the side, with Shae and the Cult of Bulshar, was all headcanon. And it looks like - I could be wrong - but it looks like we’re gonna see a lot of Nicole’s backstory, and we’re going to see more about the Cult. Well. [laughter] It’s primed to throw about five wrenches into what I built.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

ALEX : And the thing is that even if it didn’t, even if it turned out that I was actually like on the nose, and her dad involved, and all this other stuff, even if all that was completely right, they’ve already had those conversations, I’ve already got a scene where she tells Waverly that her dad loosed the Cult of the demon. So if in season three there’s a scene where it comes out that Nicole’s, like, now I –

DARKWICCAN : Right.

ALEX : - can’t have that scene in a sequel, right, because then it doesn’t make sense, it contrasts to hard with what’s in the original story. Now, that being said, I will not say never because I will eat my words. And what I could definitely image doing is doing like scene treatments for if like I’m watching season three, and I’m going “oh man, this scene would have been great if it were in a sequel, let me write that down, and just pretend the rest of the stuff that’s messing up my story, it doesn’t exist. That I could see doing, and sharing those. But I, yeah, I look at the possibility of a sequel, and I’m like, that’s probably not going to be possible, they’re gonna screw up my story so bad.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : That’s fair, that’s fair, yeah, that makes total sense. Sure.

ALEX : Yeah, and I’ve had people ask me like, y'know, even like original storylines, like monster of the week storylines, and I’m like I want to so bad, ‘cause I love writing these characters, but I also really wanna write my original stuff, and share those stories with people, and so part of me’s like no, I have to keep those ideas and use them for my own thing. Like, you’ll see it eventually, I promise, it just won’t be with Nicole, and Wynonna, and Dolls. So we’ll see, but, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha. But I’d say you’ve put in a healthy amount of work into this universe, or parallel universe, y'know, seventy-two chapters in the main fic, that’s respectable. Almost two hundred and seventy-seven thousand words, and then on top of that you’ve got the “b-sides”, which are, you’re up to nine little one shots at this point, and again, close to sixteen thousand words, so I’d say y'know you’re giving us a lot to enjoy and y'know continue to go back and re-read, and mull over. And y'know, again, you’re still working on “b-sides” so, as you day, once the third season starts up you might have some more kind of deleted scenes you can sort of wedge in, or whatever you wanna do. That’s the fun part about fanfiction, as long as you follow the essential rules of the universes you’re working in, and the rules that you’ve created, you can do whatever the F you want.

[laughter]

ALEX : Yeah, definitely.

DARKWICCAN : So, yeah. Yes, that’s why we write. So, you say you’re working on original stuff. You got anything going, working on? I think we chatted briefly at Clexacon, you said you were working on hopefully having an original piece published in the next year?

ALEX : Yeah, fingers crossed. I’ve got a few idea kicking around. One is one that’s been in progress in some form for probably like fifteen years, that’s kind of a high fantasy setting, so it’s very different from “wolves”. But I’ve another one that I have a feeling people who follow me from this are gonna like, that kind of plays with new spin on vampires, and werewolves, and the definition of a monster versus a human. That probably would be up people’s ally, so I’m excited to get to work on that too, and –

DARKWICCAN : Very cool.

ALEX : - hopefully share it soon.

DARKWICCAN : Do you know what name you’re gonna be publishing under?

ALEX : Definitely Alex, not sure what my last name for my pseudonym will be, but –

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha.

ALEX : - I’m sure I won’t be shutting up about it on my Twitter. So outta there, I will be yelling about it for months, probably forever, because that’s how I am, but.

DARKWICCAN : And folks can find you on Twitter at lexraevision, that’s rae, R-A-E, lexraevision, correct?

ALEX : Yes, that’s the one.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome, alright. Well I think that we’ve kept you caged up long enough here, Alex, and it’s time for us to unlock the cage and let you run free. But before we do that, we do of course have the final question that we need to ask, which I am going to pass over to my dear friend and co-host, Delayne, to do.

DELAYNE : Alright. You are stranded on a desert island, and can have only one fanfic to read. What is it?

ALEX : Oh, man, I’m gonna pull this full circle, and go back to _Kingdom Hearts_ , actually, ‘cause there is an incredibly long, and excellent fanfic from _Kingdom Hearts_ that is called “Boys”, by caseyvalhalla. And it’s – I wish this author would just like change the names and publish it, because it’s this beautiful like study of being a teenager and falling in love in the nineties. And it’s absolutely phenomenal, I consumed it in like a day, maybe two days, and it was, like, that’s one I always – I haven’t re-read it since, actually, but it’s the one I always go back to, it is absolutely incredible.

DARKWICCAN : Would you say that _Everything Sucks_ is sort of similar to this story? Like, I’m just trying to understand, what kind of falling in love is it?

ALEX : Kind of, it’s two of the main male characters, so it’s kind of what is it like being young and gay in like 1994. Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Okay so it’s the boy version of what eventually would be _Everything Sucks_ , kind of.

ALEX : Yeah, that’s actually a pretty good description of it.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, okay, oaky, okay, gotcha. So that’s “Boys” by caseyvalhalla. And is that Ao3 –

ALEX : It is.

DARKWICCAN : - can we find it there?

ALEX : Yeah, it is.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome, alright. Well, like we always do, we’ll be sure to provide a link to that, so folks can give that Kingdom Hearts fic a chance. And, again, Alex, thank you so much for coming on and chatting with us today, this has been so much fun, oh, my gosh.

ALEX : Thank you for having me.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely. And I’m really excited to see what other “b-sides” you might be adding, and to see where else you might go in the world of fanfiction, and the world of original fiction.

ALEX : Thanks. Fingers crossed.

DARKWICCAN : Crossing my fingers, and my toes, and my eyes for you.

ALEX : Thank you.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for joining us. Huge thanks to deathrae for joining us to talk about their fic 'When the Wolves are Silent and Only the Moon Howls'. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Naru's Origins II - A Friendship Formed and Confronting the Ram by Gareth Coker and; Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast


	20. Haught, Agent Haught

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week on the podcast DW and Delayne get serious about fighting crime as they chat about the FBI AU fic 'Ever Yours' and then sit down with author iwaseliteonce to discuss the nitty-gritty of this multi-faceted story.

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/haught-agent-haught)

 

Read the Fic:

[Ever Yours](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11862750) by iwaseliteonce

 

 

 

iwaseliteonce's Desert Island fic: [The Home Series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/483680) by wrackwonder

 

Transcript for the Deaf and HOH by FlyingFanatic and MrsBlueBacon!

 

EFA Episode 20 - Haught, Agent Haught

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host DarkWiccan and with me is the fantastic -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne! I guess I’m not used to taking compliments

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, we’re gonna work on that, y'know.

DELAYNE : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, we are, you are fantastic, and we’re gonna work on you being able to accept a compliment, y'know, ‘cause you’re pretty darn swell.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I like being swell, we need to use that word, we need to bring that back in fashion. That’s just swell.

DARKWICCAN : It is a great word. Okay, so this week we are only talking about one fic.

DELAYNE : Oh! What?

DARKWICCAN : Yes! Uh-oh, how many did you read? [laughter] I only sent the one!

DELAYNE : No, I definitely enjoy when we focus on only one, partly because I don’t read as fast as you, and the other part y'know we really can dig in deep.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. So break out your shovels, you’ll want a shovel in one hand, and a spade in the other, because this one has got so many layers to it, it starts off as sort of a romance, and ends up being law procedural, and with a lot of intense, heavy backstory, and tons of research went into it, it is just a really fantastic piece. And the story that we are talking about today is “Ever Yours” by iwaseliteonce.

DELAYNE : So in “Ever Yours” this is FBI Agent Nicole Haught, except former –

DARKWICCAN : Former.

DELAYNE : - yes, former FBI Agent Nicole Haught is now teaching – what class is she teaching? Forensic - [laughter] forensic psychology, and forensic sociology.

DARKWICCAN : Yes,

DELAYNE : And her background is deception and behavioral expert.

DARKWICCAN : And she’s one of the top - she was at the top of her game when an injury forced her to retire.

DELAYNE : Yep, and so she decides to – she gets the opportunity to become a professor at UCLA, where she encounters another professor, when there’s a mess-up with the rooms.

DARKWICCAN : Any guesses as to who that professor might be?

DELAYNE : Wynonna?

[cackling laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, no.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : I got a good laugh out of you, though. That makes me happy. It’s totally Waverly, of course it’s Waverly.

DARKWICCAN : Of course. And of course what is her focus as a professor, what is she a professor of?

DELAYNE : Language. Linguistics, I guess?

DARKWICCAN : Yes, linguistics, yes.

DELAYNE : I would much have preferred her for my English word origins class, than the professor I had, definitely.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. I think I would have preferred Professor Waverly Earp for any class. Except perhaps with this Waverly, maybe not maths. That probably – because this Waverly has dyscalculia. Which is like dyslexia, but to do with numbers, and that’s what starts off the meet-cute for our lovely ladies.

DELAYNE : And that’s why, y'know, I – it’s a fluffy meet-cute, and then, of course, it’s not really a fluffy fic, but I like to use the word fluffy because it really is an adorable meet-cute. And Waverly is ridiculously adorable in this intro.

DARKWICCAN : She really is, she is. Essentially, she has misunderstood the room assignment for her office number, and – but like spectacularly misunderstood, to the point where she has written it out on all of her syllabi to give to her students. So she was –

DELAYNE : Oh, it’s 711, 711’s easy to number, except she was supposed to be in 717 –

DARKWICCAN : Uh-huh. So – but of course, wonderfully charming and chivalrous Nicole quietly says that no, no, it was her mistake, she was meant to be in 717, not 711, and quietly contacts the Bursar’s office and has them adjust the office assignments. [laughter]

DELAYNE : This might be skipping ahead, but I love how they bring that back around towards the end. Or middle?

DARKWICCAN : Yes, middle-end, the middle of the end? The end of the middle. [laughter] Okay, so they, y'know, they have their cute little meet-cute, the whole mix-up of the rooms, and of course Nicole is immediately intrigued by this young, attractive linguistics professor. Who is of course bubbly, and wonderful, and sunshine, and rainbows. And –

DELAYNE : And unicorns.

DARKWICCAN : -so this entire –

DELAYNE : Sorry. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And unicorns. Must have the requisite unicorn. But Nicole is a troubled person, she has – is recovering from a life-changing injury that happened on the job when she was an FBI Agent. She put herself in an incredibly dangerous situation, and almost lost her life as a result, and of course she carries that baggage with her, along with a major injury that occurred as a result of that stupid decision that she made, in an effort to be a hero. And so we get to see sort of these dark nooks and crannies of Nicole’s psyche, a bit, now and then, she sorta fixates on the injury. ‘Cause – y'know, and I can’t blame her, ‘cause it’s kind of a major injury. It’s not like she stubbed a toe.

DELAYNE : Right? I can’t even imagine, because I haven’t even had broken bones yet -

DARKWICCAN : Same.

DELAYNE : - so it’s like - but my wife tends to injure herself a lot, so I can see it from the other side, I guess.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I mean it’s a life-altering injury, it’s something that she will never get over. Ever. Ever. There are, y'know, things in place that she can utilize, tools and supports, and things like that, to help manage the injury, but she – this is not something that is going to rectify itself, ever. So, y'know, she’s a little gun-shy when it comes to the prospect of possibly dating again.

DELAYNE : Right? ‘Cause the previous one – mustn’t mention any names – but definitely her ex-girlfriend was like, “See you!” right when she was in the middle of going of through all that, y'know, so.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, left her in the hospital bed.

DELAYNE : Ugh.

DARKWICCAN : And I should mention that this story was written before the reveal of Shae in the series.

DELAYNE : Oh, that’s true.

DARKWICCAN : So we can’t really say that this, that her ex was a Shae. And honestly, I don’t –

DELAYNE : Don’t care.

DARKWICCAN : - y'know. Yeah, don’t care, yeah, ‘cause it’s not about her former relationship, it’s about her burgeoning and into current relationship with Waverly.

DELAYNE : Well I think it adds to why she’s a little gun-shy, more than just –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah.

DELAYNE : - more than just –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : - y'know, the physical.

DARKWICCAN : But I think she also, she makes – I think that iwaseliteonce makes it clear in the writing that Nicole really largely blames herself. Because Nicole is the type of person who in the story - and also on the show, maybe not as much as not on the show as is taken to a bit of an extreme here in this story, “Ever Yours” – she gets laser focused. She gets focused on one thing, and she is single-minded, and it is at the expense of her other relationships.

DELAYNE : Being a workaholic myself, I definitely see – y'know, I will focus on work and ignore everything else when I don’t wanna deal with anything else, so, yeah. I get it, I can see myself in that.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and I mean I also, to a point, I do also get rather single-minded, I get into that gotta her done mode, and nothing else matters until, y'know –

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : - whatever task is, is completed, yeah.

DELAYNE : Just get it done, and then I can worry about other stuff, but there’s always something else.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So this Nicole is very much like that, but even to more of an extreme, where she really does kind of bottle everything up, and so, y'know, it’s really nice, I love how iwaselite had Waverly really changing Nicole, but not because Nicole is making a decision to change, just the nature of their relationship is very positive for each other –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - and so they’re growing with each other, and with that is Nicole sort of opening up and becoming a more open person, and more communicative, and willing to ask for help. To a point! There is a point where somebody has to tell her, “You need to ask for help.”

DELAYNE : Yep. Well, I mean, it’s kind of cyclical sometimes. You start to get better, and then you’ll have the setback, and kind of need a gentle reminder every once in a while. But overall the upwards, positive improving of oneself.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, I liked – well, let me ask you, what did you think of how iwaselite brought in characters from other series, other fandoms, and also how they handled introducing like Nicole’s friends to Waverly’s friends, or family, and kind of vice versa?

DELAYNE : I honestly, other than Callie, I didn’t realize that these – I just saw, noticed in the tags, like, oh, all of these other characters are from other things. But I don’t watch other things, so, like, I know who Callie is, but I didn’t realize, yeah, there’s quite a few people from other – and so that, yeah. [laughter] I feel kinda dumb just realizing that now, like oh, her friend Holly is something, and then the doctor, like, holy cow.

Wait, what was your question? [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : How did you – what did you think of how iwaseliteonce handled those introductions of friends and family meeting each other, y'know, meeting Waverly, or meeting Nicole, and things like that? How they came together and, y'know, just the interpersonal relationship building there.

DELAYNE : Right. It was interesting because, y'know, when you first meet Nicole, it seems like she has no one, and then suddenly these people are coming in like oh, you do have people, you just haven’t accessed them recently. I guess I was surprised, at first, and then they all became like incorporated so quickly to the group, so it’s just like they always there. So I don’t even…

DARKWICCAN : It was really like an extended family situation –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - because we don’t really get to meet actual family members, with the exception of Wynonna -

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - really, so it’s really kind of nice to see that, yeah, like you were saying, it seems like Nicole’s a bit of a loner. She went through this traumatic event and was sort of left to her own devices, so it’s nice to see that no, she did have a support system, but as you say, she just hadn’t accessed them. And I liked how –

DELAYNE : I think it’s implied she kinda did push them away, as well.

DARKWICCAN : She did, and she did it out of a misplaced sense of protection for them.

DELAYNE : [indistinctly] Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : You don’t agree?

DELAYNE : No, I said yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, I thought you said, “Oh”. It sounded like you were like, “Oh, okay, sure.”

[laughter]

DELAYNE : I don’t even think I can convey that tone that you just do so well. Wow, you really conveyed a lot in the tone: “Oh, yeah, ugh.” [laughter] Sorry, I said, “yeah!”

DARKWICCAN : So carrying on with that idea of protecting Nicole. [snigger]

DELAYNE : Yeah, Nicole has pushed people away to protect them, but it seems like now that she’s opened up to Waverly, she’s opening herself back up to these people that she had pushed away. Or just had not been in contact with, like her roommate.

DARKWICCAN : Right. Yeah, exactly, her old college roommate, Holly, who is a carry-over from the series _Rookie Blue_ . And even, ultimately, once we get into the later half of the story, Doctor Gillian Foster who is from _Lie To Me_?

DELAYNE : Yeah, that’s what the tag says.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah.

DELAYNE : I don’t know, I haven’t seen it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And we all know where Callie Torres is from. She is needing no introduction. So do you think we should explain what the injury is, should we give that away, or what do you think? [laughter] It’s like, why else would Callie be there -

DELAYNE : Oh! Right!

DARKWICCAN : - if not dealing with this type of injury?

DELAYNE : Yeah, okay, so that’s, yeah, probably telling that it’s some sort of orthopedic issue.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yes. That’s right, everyone, Nicole injury is fallen arches.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Sorry, orthopedic is not the proper word.

DARKWICCAN : No, you’re right, it is, it is, it is right, yeah, I know.

DELAYNE : Thank you for making me doubt myself.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : So no, it’s not fallen arches, it’s far more serious than that. Essentially – not essentially, factually - in this story Nicole has lost her left leg below the knee.

DELAYNE : Was it below the knee, or above the knee?

DARKWICCAN : Well, it was at the knee, so.

DARKWICCAN : At the knee, okay.

DARKWICCAN : So, yeah, yeah. So, I mean maybe a little bit above – I dunno.

DELAYNE : I’m trying to picture when the injury is described, and I’m…

DARKWICCAN : We’ll say above the knee, I think, yeah, it’s above the knee.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Because she has – the reason why she’s seeing Doctor Torres is because of the new prosthetic that has a robotic knee in it.

DELAYNE : Yeah, that’s why I was thinking.

DARKWICCAN : So yeah, above the knee, she’s lost her left leg above the knee. And that – I mean, yeah, that’s a hugely impactful injury. That’s gonna change your life significantly.

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : I can’t comprehend, at all.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : Just can’t. So yeah, the injury definitely is – it’s on Nicole’s mind a lot, and there’s –

DARKWICCAN : Because it can’t not be.

DELAYNE : - there’s definitely some intense scenes where, y'know, Nicole is feeling less than, y'know, because she’s physically missing a part of herself, and, y'know, that does something to your brain, and...

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely, and it’s really intense and kind of dark, but in an oddly enjoyable way – I know that sounds weird – but as a reader it’s in an enjoyable, it’s a meaty experience, it’s like a sumptuous feast that you get to kind of dig into when Nicole gets into these sort of hyper-focused situations where she suddenly becomes completely, completely focused on her leg. And it’s disability. And it’s incredibly, it’s incredibly emotion and visceral sort of experience, as you’re experiencing it through Nicole.

DELAYNE : Visceral is a good word for that.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and like I said, it’s a weird thing to say that I found it enjoyable, but enjoyable just in the fact that it is so excellently written and well-executed that, yeah, it’s just quite the experience as a reader to kind of have the extended moment with your main character.

DELAYNE : It’s intense. I mean, you definitely feel it when you read it, that y'know that first like essentially panic attack when Waverly accidently touches it. Yeah, so when Nicole freaks out, ‘cause Waverly’s hand just goes near it, I mean she is completely thrown for quite a while.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and again, it’s understandable, it’s an understandable – what’s wrong in words – it’s an understandable fit? I dunno.

DELAYNE : You’re right. As much as I can’t comprehend being without something, when you read it, it makes sense.

DARKWICCAN : It absolutely does, yeah, yeah, and again you really empathize with Nicole, you’re right there with and you are feeling what she’s feeling, and it also provides so much clarity as to why she behaves the way she behaves, why she thinks the way she thinks, why she’s feeling. It provides a lot of clarity because when you have this traumatic injury that will never improve, she’s not a newt, she’s not gonna a re-grow a leg or a tail. [laughter] It’s like, y'know, she’s not a starfish, she is, y'know, a human being loses a limb, that’s all she wrote for that limb, so, y'know, even replacing it with a super high quality, high tech prosthetic, you might get back to a semblance of normalcy, but you’ll never have that actual –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - normality ever again, and it’s always present, it’s always there. And I can, y'know, and yeah, it’s definitely – you can understand why anyone would be very touchy. So basically the first half of the fic is laying the groundwork for Waverly and Nicole’s relationship, and for Nicole’s kind of growth, and growing comfort, and falling in love with Waverly, and also meeting Doctor Torres, and sort of getting her legs back under her, for want of a better phrase, and… yeah, yeah, I mean honestly, and getting her to a place of feeling basically like herself again.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Feeling essentially normal again. At which point iwaselite did something rather interesting: they ran a poll. A casual poll on AO3 where they said, “Hey, I’ve got this idea, I wanna kind of take this to a place with – I’ve got an idea for a case that I would like to kind of have this go down and FBI, y'know, procedural kind of thing. Would everybody be okay with that?” And people voted, including myself, so, y'know, I voted, and I was like yeah, go for it, why not. And a lot of people agreed, and so iwaselite decided to take it down this sort of procedural track. And what a rollercoaster, but such a good one!

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : Oh, my gosh.

DELAYNE : I know one of the people is from Lie To Me, but Criminal Minds was my favorite behavioral analysis crime procedural to watch, so, yeah,  definitely got – it’s really well written, and you can definitely see the…

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, you can see the building of tension, the building of the case, it’s really interesting to see how Nicole behaves when she’s in FBI mode.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : And it’s one of those things where she warns everybody in advance, “this is how I get when I’m on a case” and you kind of go, okay can’t be that bad. Oooh.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I can’t believe I forgot about that, yeah, she’s like, she didn’t say yes to consulting right away, she said, “let me talk to Waverly -”

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, yeah.

DELAYNE : “- ‘cause I need to warn her that I can get focused.”

DARKWICCAN : And it’s one of those things where you kind of, okay, so you get focused.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Y'know, you’re like okay, well we’ll deal with it, we’ll figure our way around it. And you don’t realize just what that means until you see it in action, and it really is like: whoa.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : This is bad. This is bad.

DELAYNE : It was definitely angsty, and you just, you felt for poor Waverly.

DARKWICCAN : You feel for them both.

DELAYNE : Well, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : But yeah, of course you feel for Waverly, because it’s like the person, the woman that she had been with and fallen in love with suddenly disappeared and was replaced with this dark and stormy – almost a robot.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Uh, robot.

DARKWICCAN : Not a reference to the prosthetic!

DELAYNE : [laughter] That’s where my mind went, I apologize.

DARKWICCAN : I know.

DELAYNE : But yeah, it definitely gets dark, and you do worry about their relationship, and then Nicole has a break through. And isn’t that when they bring Doctor Foster in?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that’s when they bring Doctor Foster in, ‘cause I guess Doctor Foster was her mentor, was Nicole’s mentor when she was still going through training at Quantico, or even at college, I’m not – I think it was at college. And so yeah, they bring Doctor Foster in to sort of talk Nicole off a metaphorical ledge, essentially, and boy. [laughter]

DELAYNE : And then things get interesting.

DARKWICCAN : Once Nicole sort of gets a hold of herself again, and that’s when she has the break in the case, and, yeah, then we start pursuing the bad guy, and iwaselite does a great job of taking you down one alley, thinking you’re going one way, and all of a sudden: nope! Red herring. We’re going another way. And y'know we’re not gonna give away who the ultimate villain is, if iwaselite happens to do that when we’re interviewing them later that’s on them. [laughter]

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : But we’re not.

DELAYNE : ‘Cause I was definitely surprised.

DARKWICCAN : It seemed like this character just sort of appeared, ‘cause I don’t really recall this character being mentioned –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - until the last couple of chapters.

DELAYNE : Yeah, once they start honing in on who it could be, oh, wait, that’s a –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : Okay. I –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : I was assuming it would be some, y'know, original character or something, something else connected in some other way.

DARKWICCAN : Well, the thing is this character wasn’t – again – and here’s the thing. This character was never mentioned in any of the prior chapters, even when we were experiencing flashbacks to incidents that happened when Nicole was an active FBI Agent. So their appearance in the last three chapters, as the actual bad person, was a bit of a: “What the? Hey, where’d you come from?” And we find out that is someone that Nicole knew. Again, not saying any more than that, but because this person wasn’t mentioned in earlier chapters, when we’re sort of getting more of Nicole’s backstory, it was a bit of a: huh?! [laughter] But it still made sense, in a creepy way.

DELAYNE : Yeah, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : I like a, yeah. Hey, Delayne?

DELAYNE : Yes?

DARKWICCAN : You wanna talk about your favorite character?

DELAYNE : My favorite character?

DARKWICCAN : It’s no your – oh, is Delta not your favorite character?

DELAYNE : No, Delta – I was actually thinking about, do we need to talk about Delta, ‘cause…

DARKWICCAN : Let’s talk about Delta!

DELAYNE : Let’s talk –

DARKWICCAN : Belgian Malinous, adorable service pup.

DELAYNE : Who’s missing a paw.

DARKWICCAN : Who’s missing a paw. So she’s like Nicole. [ sob-laughing] He?

DELAYNE : He, I think.

DARKWICCAN : He, he, yeah, he. You know what throws me off? Is I know that Delta is not a gendered name, but because it ends in an A, my brain just goes, “female”. Tut, tut.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Did you take a linguistics class with Professor Waverly?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, right. Yeah. No, Delta is Nicole’s service dog, and he is so sweet, you just wanna snuggle on him.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I was definitely happy when Delta came on, and they’re all playing in the park, and oh –

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : - and even better, ‘cause Waverly – this is important to me – Waverly asks before playing with Delta, or even like petting Delta, like “is it okay if I – I’m not gonna interrupt anything?” ‘Cause people don’t realize that service dogs, like you can’t just walk up and start petting a service dog.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, they’re working, they’re on the job, you can’t – yeah, that’d be like walking up to someone, I dunno, re-stocking shelves, and just being like “Hey how are doing, duh, duh, duh, duh”, and getting right in their face. And it’s like, “I’m working, can you not?”

DELAYNE : “Hi, I don’t know you, can I give you a hug?”

DARKWICCAN : Exactly, exactly. Yeah, service dogs are working animals, and  yeah, you should always ask before interacting, and pay attention to if they’re wearing a vest that says, “I’m working, please don’t pet me”. It’s, y'know.

DELAYNE : Yeah, so I did like that, that’s important to me, because my wife is very particular, like even pets, like you don’t just walk up to someone and pet someone’s dog. Check and make sure that you can, and that should, and that the dog would be okay with that, y'know?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, but all that aside, Delta is the sweetest, and is so tuned into Nicole, I love how tuned in to Nicole’s emotions – and even like he senses when she’s in pain and she’s trying to hide it.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Y'know, and he’s right there, he’s right there to support her, and I’m just like: “This dog, this is a good dog”.

DELAYNE : Oh, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : Reminds me of my puppy dogs.

DARKWICCAN : Aww.

DELAYNE : Well, not the deaf one, she doesn’t give two shhh[its].

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN :  Yeah. But kinda how Delta y'know would lean up against Nicole, y'know, if she’s hurting, or needs some emotional support. My dog Erin does that for me -

DELAYNE : Aw.

DARKWICCAN : - y'know, when she senses that I’m upset, or if my wife’s upset, she’ll come over and she’ll lean in, and that’s her version of a hug, y'know. She’s like, “I’m here, you’re okay”, y'know? And it’s just – dogs are great, I love dogs. I was terrified for Delta’s safety, especially towards the end. I was absolutely terrified. I totally thought that there was a character who was actually the bad guy, who wasn’t the bad guy. There was a character who I thought was the bad guy, and there were a couple of times when – or at least once – when Delta and this character where alone, essentially, quote, off screen, and I’m like –

DELAYNE : And you got worried.

DARKWICCAN : I was like don’t hurt the doggie, don’t hurt the doggie, please. Of course, iwaselite did not, but.

DELAYNE : You know, I’m trying to think, because my second re-read I did not get any sort of – ‘cause I guess I already knew. I’m trying to remember way back when I first read it, did I worry about Delta’s safety, and I don’t even remember if I did because, y'know, like, when a bad guys coming after you, and of course they start to threaten your family, y'know, even on all the T.V. shows, y'know, they –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : - really mess with someone they don’t mess with them directly, they go mess with their family. And Delta is -

DARKWICCAN : Especially pets.

DELAYNE : - family.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, Delta is family, she’s absolutely family, she is a fur person that Nicole relies on and loves deeply, and yeah. And that’s a thing, like psychos always go for – like in typically, y'know, in procedurals, or y'know suspense films or novels, y'know, you prove someone’s a psycho because they kill an animal.

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : And so I’m like, I hurt all the time, can’t handle it… And then, don’t worry everybody, Delta’s fine, so you can read the story knowing that the dog is fine, the dog makes it from chapter one to chapter forty, no problem. But other character may be not so lucky. Oooh.

DELAYNE : Oooh. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oooh. I will say that there is a tag that is not used on this fic, because it doesn’t apply, so it shouldn’t be used, and that is the Major Character Death tag. Doesn’t apply here, but that doesn’t mean that people aren’t harmed in the making of this story, so. But you just have to read to find out, and I don’t know about you, Delayne, do have questions for our illustrious author?

DELAYNE : No, no I don’t, not at all. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : You have no questions? Well luckily I have questions.

DELAYNE : [laughter] O, gosh. No, I have – definitely curious about some things, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, definitely. And as we mentioned earlier, iwaselite will be joining us in the second half of our show today for a nice, fun, friendly interview, in a cinderblock room with a two-way mirror. [laughter] That is appropriate, because this is a procedural.

DELAYNE : Are you the good cop or the bad cop?

DARKWICCAN : Oh, of course I’m the bad cop, come on.

DELAYNE : And I’m the flaky cop, okay.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] You are the Jake Peralta, to my…. [laughter] Captain Holt. [laughter] [Captain Holt impression] Vindication! [laughter] [normal voice] So, yeah, let’s get to the second segment of today’s show. But I feel like – am I forgetting something, Delayne?

DELAYNE : Hey, DW?

DARKWICCAN : Hey.

DELAYNE : You should do a [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Rage of Demons by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : And welcome back everybody to the Earp Fiction Addiction, the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my illustrious co-host –

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we are thrilled to have joining us today, the author of the one, solo, individual fic that we discussed today. You always know that’s an extra special thing, when we’re only talking about one fic in an episode. And we are absolutely thrilled to have her with us, iwaseliteonce, today, going by just elite. Elite, welcome to the show.

ELITE : Howdy. How’re y’all doin’?

DARKWICCAN : Well, we’re just mighty fine, thank you so much for askin’.

ELITE : I’m glad you got to use your accent. That’s what I’m here for.

DELAYNE :  I’m not gonna try that, yeah. Sorry. [laughter]

ELITE : That’s your decision.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter]

DELAYNE : [more laughter] I do say “y’all”, that’s just, that’s in my vernacular, but I can’t pull off a full accent.

DARKWICCAN : That was a little accented, just now. “Full accent”. You sorta, you sorta had it comin’ in there, just a scosche.

DELAYNE : It sneaks in. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : [laughter]

ELITE : We appreciate the effort. I mean, ya tried and that’s worth somethin’.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Uh, it’s sneaky. Sneaky accent. Anyway, hey we’re here to talk about some fic, eh?

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Yeah, oh ok. Are you channeling your Canadian accent then, eh?

DELAYNE : Yeah, I am.

DARKWICCAN : Ok, that’s a little easier for you to get a hold of. Anyway, we’re not talking about accents, except, Elite, your accent is delightful.

ELITE : Well, thank ya.

DARKWICCAN : It reminds me of my Southern days as well. Um, but anywho, you wrote this fic. This spectacular fic, “Ever Yours”, and there’s a lot going on in it, but before we start talkin’ about it, I gotta know, how did you get into fanfiction in the first place?

ELITE : Ya know, I had this moment where I hoped you wouldn’t ask me that question, but you already have so I have to answer it.

DARKWICCAN : It's too late now.

ELITE : When I was, what, like 16, 17, I wrote a _Moulin Rouge_ fanfic on FanFiction.net.

DELAYNE : Woohoo.

ELITE : Yep. I have, I checked, I’ve got like five, six, I was fairly popular.

DARKWICCAN : Nice.

ELITE : So, if you’re into _Moulin Rouge_ fanfiction, I was real good.

DELAYNE : [laughter] You’re the first author to come on and say their previous stuff was great. Everyone else was, well, they’re embarrassed, but they also, like, they say that it was terrible. So I am so excited that you think that your previous work, _Moulin Rouge_ fanfiction, is fantastic.

ELITE : It was very artsy. There’s a lot of lyrical, poetic writing, and I had a little fanbase. It as a lot of fun.

DELAYNE : That is awesome.

DARKWICCAN : That’s great. And its good, and healthy to be proud of your work. That’s a good thing.

ELITE : I mean, it was fun. It was a fun time period. I probably could, and wouldn’t do it again, but it was fun.

DELAYNE : [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : So, you started off with _Moulin Rouge_ . How did you go from _Moulin Rouge_ to _Wynonna Earp_? What was that, what was that path?

ELITE : Accidentally, and incidentally. I joined the fandom through Twitter, and somebody, there was a prompt. I think through the _Wynonna Earp_ fans, for like a darker fic. I think it was a dark-Haught, and I wrote one of those. And everybody hated me because it was a lot darker than everybody expected it to be. And that’s how we started. That’s the first one that’s posted.

DARKWICCAN : With a careful what you wish for warning.

DELAYNE : [laughter]

ELITE : Yeah. It was very much one of those.

DARKWICCAN : You get a prompt, you’re following that prompt to its most extreme.

ELITE : Yeah. And that’s my forte. I like the dark stuff, where you’re like “what just happened, how did we get here? I don’t understand why you’re hurting my soul this much.”

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Well, it's ‘cause you asked me to, dangit.

DELAYNE : [laughter]

ELITE : I mean, you wrote this. You did this to yourself.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] And ya know, I can see what you’re saying when you say you have a, you enjoy writing for the dark side, uh, because that definitely does come out a bit in the story _Ever Yours_ , um, but I gotta ask, so, ok, so this story is essentially, it starts off as sort of a, not a rom-com, more just a, it’s not a rom-com, there’s just a rom.

ELITE : I wanted it to be a rom-com, but it’s a rom.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. It’s a rom. Uh and then sort of becomes a procedural. So, but I mean at all times, Nicole’s character has that connection to law enforcement with her background. And being a top-notch forensic, forensic psychologist type. Well, she’s not a psychologist, but you know, uh, being able to...facial forensics and all that jazz. Uh, micro expressions, yada yada yada. So how much research, ‘cause clearly I have done no research, so how much research did YOU do into uh, ya know, forensics, and forensic psych, and all that fun stuff. That Nicole is such an expert in.

DELAYNE : [laughter throughout DARKWICCAN speaking]

ELITE : Deception Expert is easier to say. That’s what I go with.

DARKWICCAN : Deception Expert, sure.

ELITE : Umm, it was a decent amount. I listen to a lot of podcasts. That’s how I pass time. I work at home and in my living room doing, like, engineering all day, so I listen to a lot of podcasts. Um, there were probably three or four of those. I read some research papers. I know somebody who is in like a similar field, so I asked some basic questions there. And, if I can be a dork, I re-watched my favorite television show, _Lie to Me_.

DELAYNE : [laughter]

ELITE : That helped with, not much of the science, but that dramatic aspect of how to bring everything in, and bring drama in. Then make it work with the science, was really super helpful. And, that’s where Dr. Foster came from. Gillian Foster was my favorite character on the show. So I dragged her in, too.

DARKWICCAN : Oh. Ok. Ok. Nice. Nice. Crossing the streams.

ELITE : Yeah, but I just say Deception Expert. It’s easier. But the science came from science, but the drama came from watching a television show in which the science and the drama were merged.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I have not seen that show. I think that was one that my wife wanted to watch, but we just never got around to it.

ELITE : I mean, it’s over and it’s on Netflix. I’m just sayin’.

DELAYNE : Right, and we added it to the incredibly long list of stuff.

ELITE : You’ve got time. Just…

DARKWICCAN : ...squeeze it in between all the fics that we’re reading.

ELITE : Yeah. I mean, read and watch at the same time. You’ll learn and attain everything, it’ll be great.

DELAYNE : [laughter] So, back to this fic starting as a rom, um, you a, you, a little ways in you did that pull about whether you wanted everyone, for the fic to stay pretty much strictly fluffy. I’m curious if the pull had said “no, don’t do the agent storyline”, would you have done a spin-off or would you have done a different fic so that you could do a really well written, intense, agent storyline?

ELITE : Yeah, definitely. The original pull was just “can I get away with this? Would anybody like this? Am I digging my own grave if I do this?” I did it because I didn’t wanna get run out of the fandom for…

DELAYNE : For getting too dark?

ELITE : ...for hurting a character or doing something that nobody expected from a fluff piece. So it was a safety net to make sure I didn’t get kicked out of the fandom. But yeah, it was gonna be, probably a, I’d say a spinoff was more likely. I suck at fluff. I’m horrible at it. It’s not my fortay. I have to ask other people, and I have to kinda do references and make sure that I do it right. I’m that tension, angst person. That’s how my brain works. That’s how my writing works normally. So that idea of going angsty really suddenly was terrifying because I didn’t wanna make people mad, and I didn’t wanna run people off. But I figured if I did it for the right reasons it would be ok. And if ya kinda knew it was comin’, that things were gonna change and it was gonna be tense, then I could get away with it a little more easily. So I figured worse case scenario, there would be a separate fic that was like “hey, this is the same general universe, but it’s the way I originally planned for everything to go.”

DELAYNE : I was just about to ask, I mean if, it seems like that’s the direction you wanted it to go, so then why you started a fluffy fic just to write a fluffy fic I guess?

ELITE : No, I didn’t plan that at all. I just wanted to…

DELAYNE : Ok.

ELITE : I wanted the characters to matter. And everybody knows the characters as they are now. So I think, if you’re gonna introduce a different universe, you’ve gotta introduce your version of the characters first. And make them count, and make people like them. And then you can do dark and twisty things to them.

DELAYNE : [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, Elite, I completely agree with you there. Absolutely, and I know that we keep saying fluff, but I honestly don’t think that the first half, or really a little more than half of your story is fluff. It seemed to me like a serious, mildly dramatic romance story.

DELAYNE : Yeah, that’s true.

DARKWICCAN : Because you did have light elements for sure, and falling in love is always beautiful and generally fluffy, but they both come with baggage. Especially Nicole, so that was stuff that they had to work through to get to the point where they were at, when you finally had the story take a turn. And the thing that I really liked, is that when you did the poll, you said “hey is it ok if I, would you guys be ok with it? I’m thinking about taking this direction.” And we all, I was a voter. I voted yes, take this direction. And you didn’t, it wasn’t like an immediate left turn. You built up to it and it was more of a gentle kind of sliding, sloping curve to get to the point where we had Nicole back at the FBI with her partner there. So, yeah, it was never, I never felt like the rug was jerked out from under me in your writing. It was definitely a natural build and flow to get from point A to point Z.

ELITE : Well, thank you. That was kind of the point. But I think if you force it, it won’t work. If you can make it natural, and you can make it feel like “oh yeah, well, this would actually happen. Maybe there’s a case that’s that off and this situation made that a possibility and this conversation made that work.” I think if you make it natural then no one questions that it was something that was gonna happen no matter what. If it had ended up being fluffy then that’s fine, but I think if you take the time to make it a clean transition, then no one notices the difference.

DELAYNE: Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And it was absolutely a clean transition for sure.

DELAYNE : If you hadn’t have put the poll, I wouldn’t have even thought anything of it, honestly. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Same. Same. I wouldn’t have thought anything about it either. It seemed like such a natural progression that. Yeah.

ELITE : Well, that’s good. That’s how it was outlined, so I’m glad it went that way.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. So, you mentioned bringing in Dr. Gillian Foster. Is it (J)illian or (G)illian?

ELITE : It’s (J)illian.

DARKWICCAN : (J)illian, ok. So you mentioned bringing in Dr. Gillian Foster from _Lie to Me_ because she’s a favorite character from that show. You also brought in other characters from other shows, including everyone’s favorite orthopedist from _Grey’s Anatomy_ , Callie Torres. Had you planned on bringing her in originally, or did it just naturally happen?

ELITE : Umm, it was mostly natural. I’m a huge, I have a big character crush on Callie Torres. Let’s be honest, we all do.

DARKWICCAN : That’s fair.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I am in love with Sara Ramirez just as much.

ELITE : I’m not even gonna try and say that name right. We’re not gonna attempt it, it’s gonna be wrong. Callie Torres it is.

DARKWICCAN : [hard laughter]

ELITE : Especially...I’m glad that made you happy. The way she’s written really early on the show, when she gets to be a person, when she gets to be a doctor, was always really interesting to me. And I needed that exciting character that Nicole could relate to outside of the relationship. Yeah, her college roommate’s there, but I think I needed to bring in somebody that could relieve some tension from her. So Callie was a good safety net to do that. That was Nicole’s chance to feel normal, and that’s something that I made very obvious. That she just wants to feel normal, and wants to feel like every other human being on the planet. So, Callie gave her that chance to be a normal human being and to have somebody that could make her life feel the way she thought it should feel. And that was a fun way to do it, but it was actually really smart because I accidentally got some _Grey’s Anatomy_ fans that I didn’t think were gonna come in. Umm.

DARKWICCAN : So you made some additional Earper fans I’m sure. Because if you’re bringing in _Grey’s_ fans and they’re maybe not familiar with _Wynonna Earp_ , then good job. Check you out.

ELITE : I brought some accidental fans. A lot of people wanted to know where Arizona was. There aren’t any children in my fic, so that’s where she is. With the children. It was fun to see the people who were reading just to see if I brought in characters that they liked from other shows. But yeah, Callie was just a way to make Nicole feel normal again.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I remember when you first started posting, I remember I asked you, “hey, what kind of prosthetic is Nicole using? Is it a sea leg?” and you replied, “let me get back to ya.” Or something to that effect.

ELITE : Yep. I was researching between three different models. So I was trying to make sure that I gave you the answer that was actually gonna use in context.

DELAYNE : Wow.

ELITE : Thanks for calliin’ me out.

DELAYNE : Speaking of prosthetics, um, man. There were some intense scenes of Nicole feeling damaged or less than because of her injuries and it reads very, very real. I didn’t...on my re-read this time I made some connections that I hadn’t on my first read. And whoa. I’m curious how much research that went into that.

ELITE : A lot. A lot more than I planned. Umm, I am an engineer, I work with software and things like that. At the time, one of my friends builds prosthetics. Again, I can’t say the word for what his job is, I’m not gonna try. But I went in and helped him with some tech things and got to watch him build prosthetics and I met one of his patients who was in kind of a similar situation and got to talk to him a little bit.

And one of my son’s friends was in an accident in which he lost a limb, so I learned a lot from those two experiences just talking to them and figuring out what day to day looked like, and what challenges existed. Challenges that I didn’t think of. Um, like staying over at a girlfriend’s house, you’ve gotta have a chair to sit in, you’ve gotta have handrails, you have to have really specific things and my brain didn’t go there straight out of the gate.

So I needed those questions to be answered and for somebody to go, “yeah you can’t do that because that doesn’t work.” So, the research was nice. It was way more than I expected and it was purely just luck and ending up in a situation where I could. It would have been different if I hadn’t had that information. I probably would have gotten called out by somebody for just completely blowing it.

And a lot of it is letting my own insecurities, and fears, and brain work out how I would respond in that situation. Because I’m that person, if I have an injury, no matter how stupid it is, if I twist an ankle, I cut the tip off my finger recently. Yeah, it didn’t feel good. But I’m that person where if I have something like that, no matter how small it is, I don’t see anything else. That’s all that I recognize. So, if we’re in a conversation and you bring up something and my brain goes to that. Nothing else exists, I’m totally stuck on that thing.

And I decided through writing that Nicole would be the same way. If there were any situation where the prosthetic or the limb loss could be brought up, that would be all that existed in her universe for that time period. And getting in that mind set and staying in it was a lot easier than it should have been. But I would normally go to a really specific chapter and as I got further in it changed, but I would go to a chapter and read a section and go “cool, I can write this again.”

But it was just that combination of talking to the right people and going “what would I do?” Because I feel like, and I still do, if I were in that situation, I would respond in a very specific way and I think Nicole would too. And that made it so scary easy to write.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I can see what you mean when you say how scary how easy it would be to write that. That’s...’cause yeah you do kind of go down that hole, you get into your character’s head and you’re down that well with them.

ELITE : Yeah, and that’s why I stick with Nicole. I adore Waverly, she’s a wonderful human being, but my brain doesn’t work that way. I am not rainbows and unicorns and sunshine and flowers, I just don’t have that brain.

DARKWICCAN : Well, in all fairness to Waverly, neither is she.

ELITE : I know, but normally it gets written that way. Maybe one day I’ll write a dark-Waverly.

DELAYNE : But, Waverly through Nicole is sunshine.

ELITE : Right, when she’s happy. She is that way. Maybe one day I’ll do a dark-Waverly piece.

DARKWICCAN : Whoop. You heard it here first folks. You heard it here first.

DELAYNE : [laughter]

ELITE : Well, now I have to do it.

DARKWICCAN : Now you have to. And you’re welcome.

ELITE : I mean, I’m not upset about it.

DARKWICCAN : Ok.

ELITE : She’s always been easier to write because I get it. I really do. I get it completely.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Well, speaking of going down on that dark corridor with Nicole. She, you have her written as having, as someone who has a penchant for disappearing into their work like really, it, they just become their work. Umm, and to the detriment of all other relationships outside of work, and so I’m wondering is this something that you sort of picked up on in Nicole’s character from the show or is this something you developed specifically for this story, are you drawing from personal experience, maybe your own or a friend’s, where did this very driven, single minded focused character trait come from.

ELITE : To answer your question, it’s both. It’s source material and personal experience. I, 100%, you can’t talk me out of it think that Nicole is an all or nothing personality, she’s an all or nothing person. Relationships and work specifically. If she can’t be all in and can’t be 100%, I don’t think that she would do things at all. So that was a huge part of it, is from the source material and from what I think of the character. I think if she’s not 100% then it’s wrong. That’s in character in my brain. And when I write, I have a huge tendency as a human to fixate and dwell on things. So I let her carry and portray that because I get that. If I’m in any negative situation, I fixate on the smallest thing in the world. And for Nicole, like in the big chapter, like where the injury chapter, or the injury happened chapter, it was blood in the shoes. And somebody asked me about it.

DELAYNE : Yeah, that was…

ELITE : Yeah, somebody asked me about that in a DM so it wasn’t posted anywhere. And the answer to that question is, when I fixate on something, it’s not what you’d think it would be. It’s not “oh well, I broke my leg, that sucks.” It’s “I can see the bone in my leg and that’s all I can see and this is what the bone looks like and this is what it feels like to be able to see the bone” and I fixate on that thing.

DARKWICCAN : Mhmm.

ELITE : And kinda like before, nothing else exists. That’s all I can see is that thing.

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha.

ELITE : And that made, that fixation made the disappearing in the work and the tension easier to write because the dwelling and the fixation makes sense to me. I understand it, and I comprehend how that works a little better so it’s a little easier for me to make it work on a page. Umm, I am still a little split on whether she’d be someone who would willingly admit, like dark or negative feelings, or if she’d be able to explain that like super easily. I still don’t know, and I think that’s actually really good. Because it would change the way I wrote the character and I think it would have made it softer than I wanted it to be. So, the disappearing was super important for me because the people that do things like that disappear in their work, they become that case. If you listen to the people that have investigated the Zodiac Killer or that guy that just got caught recently, the Golden State Killer, the detectives and the people that worked on that, were completely built into that work. They were devoted to it. And I think that’s normal and I think it’s admirable and I think it’s real. And I honestly think without it the character would have been just a soft little puppy, and I didn’t want a soft little puppy.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : I’m just thinking, Nicole, the puppy dog FBI agent. That doesn’t really work.

ELITE : Yeah, nobody wants that. That puppy gets shot and nobody wants that, so, you can’t have soft puppy Nicole. She’s gotta be tougher and harder and she’s gotta have a little shell and she’s gotta have, I feel like if you devote yourself to something you also separate the people that matter to you. Kind of automatically. So if she had been like “oh I can go home and everything’s great and this case doesn’t matter.” Then I think that makes it more dangerous than if…

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah.

ELITE : ...than if she comes home and doesn't wanna talk about it. And work is always on her mind and she’s careful, then everybody is safer.

DELAYNE : I wanna know, how, the decision for the villain, what was the process.

ELITE : So, this is the bomb drop that I’ve been waiting for the entire time. I outline everything, I feel so sorry for my beta reader. I didn’t have one at this point, I do now. Because I am that person that has like a 13 page outline. The villain was an absolute re-write. I laid the ground work for Bobo to be a red herring and a lackey character because that was too easy.

DARKWICCAN : Mhmm.

ELITE : I figured I could get everybody in that direction, but I wanted to really curve-ball who it was. I had it down to two people. Dolls was number two. He was never the first choice at any point.

DARKWICCAN : Ok.

ELITE : Umm, the first choice was Nicole.

DELAYNE : OH. SHIT! [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh my God!

ELITE : And…

DELAYNE : You are not kidding.

ELITE : And a...

DARKWICCAN : Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Ok, hang on. So, ok. So you need, ok. So explain that. How on earth could she have been the villain?

ELITE : So, I have that original ending on my computer, in a locked file that no one’s ever read. It was gonna be pretty fast paced and insane and way more twisted, but the injury absolutely happened. It was 100% legitimate a thing that happened, but if you go back and read for it, expecting that to be the ending, there’s some little things that kind of lay the groundwork, but it was complicated and insane and twisted and I let one person know that that’s what I was gonna do and said “if I did this, how bad would things be for me?” And they went “please don’t do that. You would…” I would legitimately be run out of the fandom if I’d taken you 38 chapters. ‘Cause I wasn’t gonna drop it till the last chapter, so you would have gotten chapter 39 or 40 and umm. So you would have gone all the way through with “aww, look how sweet she is, she’s just a sweet little fixated puppy with one leg and it’s just the cutest thing in the universe” and then you’d get punched in the face with the fact that she’s a bad guy that likes to kill people for fun.

DARKWICCAN : I’m gonna say that your friend was very very wise. Because…

ELITE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Nicole is a protected character within the fandom.

ELITE : Oh absolutely. I would have been run out with pitchforks. You all would have never seen me again. That would have been the end of everything. I would have gotten two fics in and I would have retired.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

ELITE : I would. I really thought about one day just overly tagging and exaggerating everything and being like “hey, this is how it was gonna go. For the record, this is everything that I have outlined, this is the entire last, I think it’s 3 chapters. This is the last 3 chapters as I originally had it written. Here it is.” I may do it one day.

DELAYNE : When you’re brave enough.

ELITE : I’ll enjoy the fact that. I’ll enjoy the fact that not everybody hates me right now. But one day, if I decide I don’t wanna do this anymore, I’ll drop it.

DELAYNE : You definitely dropped it.

ELITE : I told you I was gonna drop one bomb and I did. You’re welcome. ‘Cause now, NOW, you and whoever listens to this. Are gonna go read for it and there’ll be these little things where you’re like “oh, huh. That’s mean. Alright.”

DARKWICCAN : I do know there’s the one time she loses her temper for like a minute, but that’s the only thing that’s poppin’ into my head where I could go “hmm”. Ok, moving happily along. I think we’ve talked about this as much as we can. Umm, we could continue to talk about it, but time is a thing. So, why don’t we turn a blind eye to all of that and hop along to our final question.

DELAYNE : I guess that’s on me huh?

DARKWICCAN : No, I can ask it, I can ask it. Alright, so as you know Elite, we have a final question we ask all of our guests. And a lot of our guests find it to be the most difficult question, we’ll see if you feel the same. And here we go. You’re stranded on a desert island and can have only one fanfic to read, what is it?

ELITE : I have had this answer planned since the moment you DM’d me.

DARKWICCAN : Ah.

ELITE : If you follow me on Twitter, this will not be a surprising answer. My answer is the “Home” Series by wrackwonder.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah.

ELITE : I love, love the “Home” Series. All the pieces included. I believe it’s currently 6. If i’m incorrect I love you wrackwonder, please let it slide. It is the most honest, beautifully written relationship and family and just tragic series of pieces I’ve ever read. I love them, I read it every couple months I’m not gonna lie at all. I’ll read the entire series every few months. If I’m stuck on something. There’s a specific piece in it, I didn’t look up the name of it. Umm, that is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read. And if I can’t figure out how to go with something then I’ll go read that piece, just to get my brain focused enough on “ok, this is how you bring pain without ruining things, this is how you bring pain and fix it.” And I love it. I really do. It’s perfect.

DARKWICCAN : It is a gorgeous series and I’m wondering if you’re speaking about. It is 6 pieces long so far. I’m wondering if the one you’re speaking about is the last one.

ELITE : Uh uh. It’s like the third one, the uh. I don’t wanna spoil it. It’s the one where Waverly has to go pick up Nicole and she’s recently had a baby.

DARKWICCAN : It’s the second one.

ELITE : It’s just so good.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I love that one. I love all of them, but yeah I completely agree with you. That is such a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous one shot. It is absolutely wonderful. And I am more than happy, and thrilled to provide a link to the “Home” Series by wrackwonder in our show notes as your desert island selection.

ELITE : Yep, no contest. That’s 100% it. I knew it right away. It has never changed.

DARKWICCAN : I’m so glad you came prepared. [laughter] But Elite, thank you so much for coming on the show today and dropping some bombs and blowing our minds a little bit, that has been a lot of fun. And also, “WHAT?!” inducing.

ELITE : Absolutely.

DARKWICCAN : And I’m sure I know that we’re gonna have you back on again in the future and I look forward to picking your brain again down the line. But until then, until then, thank you again for coming on and I hope you have a great rest of your weekend.

ELITE : Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for having me. It was a blast, honestly.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for joining us. Tremendous thanks to iwaseliteonce for joining us today to talk about her fic ‘Ever Yours’ Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story and Rage of Demons by Darren Korb; The Adventure Guild by Erik Barone; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast


	21. Hip to Be Square

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week on the podcast DW and Delayne strap into their saddle shoes and bobby socks as they swoon over the peachy keen fic 'A Rock n Roll Kinda Love' by Sweet82405. Then they take the author out for burgers and shakes and get some boss info on the creation of this story!

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/hip-to-be-square)

 

Read the Fic!: [A Rock n Roll Kinda Love](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12408417) by Sweet82405

 

 

 

Sweet's Desert Island fic: [Stop Making Eyes At Me (But I Don't Really Want You To)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10860639) by Half & TheGaySmurf

 

Episode Artwork by the fantastic [Chantal Zeegers](https://www.redbubble.com/people/czeegers)!

 

Transcript for the Deaf and HOH by Flying Fanatic!

 

EFA Episode 21 - Hip to Be Square

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks everybody and welcome to another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host DarkWiccan, and with me is my incredibly awesome co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And this week on the show we are wearing our jeans with the rolled up cuffs, and our saddle shoes, and bobby socks, our fancy little button-up blouses, and pink ladies’ jackets, because this week we are going back to the past, all the way to the 1950s, ‘cause we’re talking about one fic, and one fic only this week. Delayne, you wanna introduce that story?

DELAYNE : Today we’re gonna talk about ‘A Rock 'N Roll Kinda Love’ by Sweet82405.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that’s right, this is a fantastic high school AU that is set in the 1950s U.S.A, somewhere in the United States, Purgatory exists, in this story. And it is a pleasant, lovely, little story so far. Only three chapters in, but quite a lot has happened in those three chapters, and I’m sure that we’ve got more coming very soon, so that’s kinda why we left it on the schedule, because we knew that there was more to come, very soon, for this story. Even may have posted by the time this episode airs, so.

DELAYNE : That would be fantastic.

DARKWICCAN : That would be “totally boss”.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Yeah, that would be “swell”.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] It would be “keen”.

DELAYNE : Ooh, I like that, that would be very “keen”.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well this is a sweet little story. It is basically a kind of – would you call it a - not a sanitized, that’s not the right word – uh – homogenized – no, not homogenized. What’s the word I’m looking for here, Delayne? It’s basically – it’s Pleasantville, y'know? It is – there’s no homophobia, there’s no kind of negativity that is endemic to the time period, right? It really is just like, there are gay people, and there are straight people, and everybody accepts everybody else, and that’s fine. It’s not a thing of oyu shouldn’t date that girl because that’s another girl, it’s you shouldn’t date that girl because that boy, because y'know, the boy wants to date that – whatever - you know what I’m saying? It’s like jealously, it’s –

DELAYNE : Right. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : - oh, god. [laughter] I’m a hot mess, Delayne.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Yeah, for the time period, the issue isn’t y'know, it’s a fluffy story about two women, but that’s the – the issue isn’t because it’s two women in love, it’s just the normal petty jealousy and, y'know, people are annoying. [laughter] Kind of, yeah we date angst of high school AU.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Right, yeah. And you know one thing that really caught my attention about this story, right off the bat? Is that it’s the Earps moving to town.

DELAYNE : Yeah. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : The Earps move to town.

DELAYNE : Didn’t we just discuss how you really, really, really wanted a high school AU where Nicole wasn’t the new kid?

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Yeah, we did, we did. I think it was, we were talking about the ‘Too Cool For School’ Episode, yeah. [laughter]

DELAYNE : Hey, you got your wish. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : I did, I did -

DELAYNE : Before you even wished for it.

DARKWICCAN : - I’m excited. Yeah. And the Earps are a cohesive family unit, that’s not a broken home, Mr. Earp [deepens voice] Mr. Earp –

DELAYNE : Mr. and Mrs. Earp, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Mr. And Mrs. Earp, yes. They’re still together, and all three girls, Willa, Wynonna, and Waverly, are present and accounted for…

DELAYNE : All in high school.

DARKWICCAN : …doesn’t mean that – all in high school, yeah, had to do a little juggling of ages, but, I mean, you know what that’s part of the thing you gotta do with a high school AU, just part of it. Let’s see, what else… oh, Waverly is the youngest, she’s technically sophomore age, which, casting my mind back, is like, what? Fifteen? But she skipped a grade, so she’s a junior along with Wynonna and Nicole.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Right?

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And Willa is a senior. So let’s just say that Mr. and Mrs. Earp were a very happy couple. [laughter] For at least three years of their marriage. Hey, they seem to continue to be a happy couple, so good for them.

DELAYNE : [laughter] They’re really good – well – [laughter] about every nine months or so.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : So, yeah, so in keeping with the canon from the television series, Waverly is very, very bright, and as a result has skipped a grade. And that’s really kind of the only place that we stick with canon.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Other than we’re in Purgatory, but it’s just – it’s a Pleasantville version of Purgatory. So no demons, no supernatural elements or anything like that. Yeah. How would you describe this series, or this story, overall as far as aesthetics, Delayne?

DELAYNE : Sweet writes in the notes; “Purgatory is more like Pleasantville”, but really the movie that came to mind the most when reading was _Grease_.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I actually, I thought this was going to be a musical.

DELAYNE : [laughter] That’s how much you were brought into the Grease world?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Well because you’ve got the sort of Nicole-as-Danny Zuko type vibe happening, and Doc is kinda Kenickie, kinda vibe happening.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Nothing that is like glaring, or overt, but it’s just it’s a vibage that’s there, and I have to say, though, relieved it’s not a musical. So happy.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I was not expecting them to break out into song like you were. I can’t even imagine that. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I, yeah. [laughter] So in that respect – you know, it gives me a lot of like vibage like, there is the _Grease_ element, but also _Leave It To Beaver_ , and –

DELAYNE : Yeah. I even have _Happy Days_ , where she kicks the juke box to make it work. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah, yeah, that’s right! She does, I thought that was – I was waiting for her to go “eyy”. [both laugh] But essentially it’s really kinda sweet when Waverly and Nicole – sorry, Waverly and Wynonna and Willa – start at Purgatory High we get that wonderful across-the-parking-lot first type, y'know, kind of catching eyes on each other situation, and Nicole sees –

DELAYNE : “Ooh, who’s that?”

DARKWICCAN : - sees Waverly standing from across - yeah, she’s like, “Oh. Hello.” And then Doc makes a comment, and she gets immediately angry at him because he says something a little bit, slightly just barely trending toward lewd, and she’s like, “Excuse you?!”, and he’s like, “I’ve been talking about, y'know, the girl next to her”, and that’s Wynonna, of course.

DELAYNE : [laughter] “Talking about the other one.”

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, exactly.

DELAYNE : “Oh, it’s okay, you can say rude comments.”

DARKWICCAN : “You can say rude comments about Wynonna, that’s fine.” Yeah. But I really love the courtship, it’s a very, very sweet courtship ‘cause, I mean, Nicole is a greaser, y'know, she’s from “the wrong side of the tracks”, or whatever. Y'know, she’s from a rougher element, and yet she’s so sweet, and gentle, and careful with Waverly, and it’s just really, really adorable. And I can totally picture Waverly in a poodle skirt and bobby socks –

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : - I can totally picture it, it’s so easy, it’s so easy. With the high ponytail, and y'know, the cardigan sweater, yeah, I can totally see it.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I – [laughter] As much as I would prefer the pants, and the white shirt, and the leather jacket, I’d probably pull off the poodle skirt. [laughter] Oh, that’s a crappy realization. And saddle shoes, though, man, I remember when I had saddle shoes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : They were the shit. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, you’re talking about you, I thought you were talking about Waverly.

DELAYNE : I’m talking about me. I came to the – as you’re describing –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, okay.

DELAYNE : - Waverly, I’m picturing myself for some reason, I’m like, oh, my god. [laughter] That was random.

DARKWICCAN : Well, y'know, I’ve seen pictures of you from high school, I can believe that.

DELAYNE : Oh. [both laugh] Actually it was when I was a tween, was when I was obsessed with _Grease_. I had a little gang of friends that we all used to watch it on the regular. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : I think everybody goes through a _Grease_ phase.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Well, not everybody, but, y'know, a good chunk of people go through a _Grease_ phase, for sure. I mean, I went through a _Grease_ phase in like middle school, but, yeah. Because, y'know, it’s fun and it’s poppy, and you can watch it on you T.V., y'know, VHS or whatever, and y'know, yeah.

DELAYNE : And it was the style, man, y'know?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, totally.

DELAYNE : It was cool.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, the style was kickin’, yeah, yeah, it was great. And it’s really fun to imagine Nicole, and Waverly, and Doc, and really all of them, y'know –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - in that kind of style. I mean, I kind of picture Wynonna – if Wynonna was a _Grease_ character, she’d be Rizzo. Like, totally.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Totally. And Doc –

DARKWICCAN : Including the pregnancy scare.

[both laugh]

DELAYNE : That was good, yeah. That was good. Doc with his comb, and dipping it in that kid’s soda?

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, totally, mhm, mhm. But, y'know – okay, so enough about _Grease_ , let’s actually talk about this story. I keep trying to bring it back around, so let’s solidly bring it back around to this story. I really like the classic sort of motifs that sweet keeps setting up in this story-telling, including the image of the gaggle of giggling cheerleaders who are always constantly surrounding -

DELAYNE : Oh, yeah, what does what she call them, giggle - the giggle girls?

DARKWICCAN : The giggle girls, or the giggle committee, or something like that, yeah. Constantly surrounding Waverly and trying to get her to join, and the image of them all sitting up on the bleachers, and watching the homecoming game. And all the imagery is really strong, and it really puts you there. I honestly, there were times where I felt like I could smell the environment, that’s how well written this piece is, that’s how vivid it is, at least for me. Y'know, especially when Nicole manages to get Waverly away from the Homecoming Game and takes her out for a, y'know, a burger and a shake. Again, vivid imagery, like I can totally see that, I can totally picture that. But I could honestly smell the wet gravel underneath their feet as they were making their way towards the parking lot, that kind of musty, dusty smell. I could smell the rain in the air that she was describing , I could smell the snack stand at the game, and here the sounds of all the people, it was very much like I was there, y'know? Which is a sign of an excellent, excellent writer.

DELAYNE : And a sign that your imagination is much better than mine. I mean, I was picturing it, definitely, it’s very much... I didn’t feel like I was reading it, I felt like I was watching it, but I am not quite as immersed as you got. [laughter] That might just be me, though.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] I mean, possibly. It also is just how much time have you have with it, as I know I had a bit more time with this story than you did.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, no I mean, all of the little scenes that sweet puts the characters into, it’s all very vivid, I mean any time that - oh, my gosh, when Nicole took Waverly out on their first date, and it was so awkward? You could just totally see that fancy restaurant, and you can see Nicole, y'know, sort of dressed as nicely as she can manage to dress herself and still feel comfortable, and Waverly, y'know, looking stunning in her dress, and sitting across from each other sort of awkwardly at this linen-covered table.

DELAYNE : Looking at this menu like, “Ooooh, what?”

DARKWICCAN : “What is this?” Yeah. They’re just so cute. And again it’s just so easy to picture, it’s just, ugh, lovely, I really, this is such an immersive story; I just love diving into it. just sort of living in it for the period while I’m reading it.

DELAYNE : The part that caught my eye a lot is how often Champ got drove past kicking up dirt and dust at him.. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah. Nicole’s daily revenge on Champ Hardy. Spinning her wheels in the dirt of the parking lot so he’d get rocks and dust in his face, on his clothes, and on his friends. I was like, yeah. [laughter]

DELAYNE : Which, y'know, it’s yeah, the douchebag deserves it ‘cause, y'know there’s a scene where he’s picking on poor Jeremy so.

DARKWICCAN : And not only that, he won’t leave Waverly alone.

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : Like, no means no, mister, come on. Oh, my gosh, that scene the day after homecoming, or the Monday after homecoming, when they’re all going back to school and he like comes up on Waverly and he’s all “Hey, so where’d you go, y'know, at homecoming” and she’s like “oh I’m sorry, I had to leave”. And he’s like “well, why don’t you make it up to me by going -“

DELAYNE : Right? Ugh.

DARKWICCAN : And it’s like, oh, no, you did not just say that, you slime. [laughter] But he keeps saying that, like every time he tries to convince Waverly to go out with him it’s because she owes him something. It’s like no! No.

DELAYNE : I can’t even, I can’t even. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : OH, man, what a dweeb. Like, ugh.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Yeah, so there’s also quite a few scenes, because, y'know, this is the fifties, and smoking is cool, so there’re all standing out by the car smoking cigarettes before school starts.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, although Waverly doesn’t smoke.

DELAYNE : Right! That was -

DARKWICCAN : No, Waverly doesn’t smoke, but Wynonna will steal a drag off of Doc’s cigarette, which Doc just thinks is so sexy. [laughter] And at this point in the story we’re only three chapters in, I think I mentioned that earlier, so we’re really just still in the establishing of characters and the building to a storyline, a clear plot. We don’t really have that yet, so far what we’ve had is really the beginnings the Waverly and Nicole’s very, very cute and adorable relationship. We have the obligatory share a shake scene.

DELAYNE : With the cherry! Oh, that’s like, Waverly loves cherries, and Nicole like, their shared milkshake came with two, and Nicole just twists the shake glass around to point her cherry towards Waverly, so Waverly can have it.

DARKWICCAN : Aww.

DELAYNE : And I noticed -

DARKWICCAN : It’s so precious.

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s so sweet. And of course we have the obligatory drive in movie sequence.

DELAYNE : That was good.

DARKWICCAN : Where Nicole was a perfect gentlewoman, I mean, she was! She made sure to keep her hands in the safety zones.

DELAYNE : Safety zones.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Tightly gripping her - um - the back of her car seat on one side, and careful as to where her hand went the other side, y'know?

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : She was minding her manners, she was being a very, y'know, she was being a gentlewoman, she was being chivalrous, she was being very careful about what she did, so yeah. [laughter] I think it’s interesting that Nicole’s favorite - her idol, I think is what sweet refers to her as at one point - her idol is Elvis Presley.

DELAYNE : Well her -

DARKWICCAN : I found that interesting. Elvis Presley and not James Dean.

DELAYNE : Yeah. That’s a very interesting point.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : ‘Cause I would have figured the way that she dresses, and what not, kinda emulates James Dean a little bit more. Of course I guess, y'know, James Dean was the way that he was dressed  for his movies and what not was sort endemic of the time period, and sort of represent the time period, but yeah. ‘Cause Elvis is such a sexual person, like he was, y'know, he was shocking.

DELAYNE : Highly controversial.

DARKWICCAN : Highly controversial, Elvis the pelvis was. So I just find it really interesting that that’s who Nicole’s favorite celebrity is, is Elvis Presley.

DELAYNE : Side note, my mother in law loves Elvis Presley as well. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : That’s okay, you’re allowed to share that side note, that’s fine.

DELAYNE : Yeah, another interesting part of this, to me, is Willa.

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah.

DELAYNE : And she’s very, very cranky.

DARKWICCAN : Willa the pill-a. [laughter] But that’s pill hyphen a, not like a pillow, like a pill - okay, when you have to explain a joke it’s not funny anymore, so I’m just gonna stop.

DELAYNE : [laughter] It’s funnier, to me.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] And that’s why I love you so much, Delayne. Who else is gonna laugh at my terrible jokes?

DELAYNE : Yeah, so Willa is a pill, and she does not like that they have Purgatory.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of understandable because where they’d moved from, she was sort of queen on campus, right? She was really popular, and yeah, I think that’s kind of it. She was really popular. [laughter] And so, y'know, here they are in Purgatory, and she’s not really being given any attention, meanwhile her two sisters, especially Waverly, everyone is kind of surrounding her and wanting her to be part of their group, or their clique, and Willa is not -

DELAYNE : Yeah, including

DARKWICCAN : - happy about the change.

DELAYNE : - the giggle squad. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yes, the giggle squad. I’m like Willa would prefer the giggle squad? Really? Okay. I’m surprised Waverly hasn’t sent the giggle squad Willa’s direction.

DELAYNE : Yeah, like she wants to be your friend, go talk to her. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So we don’t again, we’re really early on in the story-telling here but we have had a glimpse of a character who might possibly become w a villain.

DELAYNE : Yeah, so Bobo rolls up in a - I found this to be an interesting note - in apparently the same make and model of Nicole’s car. Of course painted very differently, ‘cause he’s got, y'know, skulls or something - he’s got it souped up because he’s, y'know, obviously looking like a bad guy and he drives by sneering at them.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Sorry, sorry, I just imagined him driving by sneering, instead of steering. Like that’s his mode of navigation, is he sneers. Instead of steers. Sorry.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Oh, my god. I jumped to _Buffy_ , where Anya’s pretending to steer, but not touching the steering... [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : “I’ve learned to drive by gesturing”, yes. But yeah, Bobo shows up on Purgatory High School grounds and kind of drives threateningly past Nicole and Doc, and they share some words, and y'know Waverly is like, immediately keyed in that there is history here, there is something going on and it’s not great. And so we learn like that there is a rather violent history between Bobo’s gang and - I can’t really tell if Doc and Nicole are in a gang, or if it’s just that - are they in a gang?

DELAYNE : I -

DARKWICCAN : Or is it that they’re just a group of people who oppose Bobo’s gang?

DELAYNE : It doesn’t feel like they’re in a gang, so I would -

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it really doesn’t.

DELAYNE : - I would lean towards that, ‘cause they grew up together, they’re best friends, and clearing on the wrong side of the tracks, so yeah they’re just probably the group of the kids from the other side of the tracks that don’t like how Bobo and his gang are probably bossing everyone around, so.

DARKWICCAN : Right, yeah. Yeah that’s kind of how I took it to be, too. ‘Cause they don’t behave like a formalized gang in any way. It’s more just they’re friends, and they’re friends who oppose this -

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - this bastard, Bobo. So we will see where that goes, y'know. You don’t, I mean, it’s the old rule, you don’t bring a gun on stage if you’re not gonna shoot it. So Bobo has been introduced, and you wouldn’t just introduce him and then forget about him. You know that sweet’s got something cooking on the back burner, as the story continues to formulate and take shape, that ultimately will be revealed. And, I mean, the fact is she’s got three opportunities for bad guys in this story. She’s got Bobo, who’s the most obvious, she’s got Champ because he’s a dick, and she’s got Willa. And we know from the show _Wynonna Earp_ that Willa and Bobo, y'know, have a thing.

DELAYNE : Are definitely bad guys.

DARKWICCAN : Definitely bad, yeah. But I mean also they have a romantic thing, so who’s to say that Willa, despite her all “Greasers are gross and why would we ever allow Waverly to associate with a greaser like Nicole” thing - that’s apparently my Willa voice. [laughter] That who knows, maybe she’ll - in an effort to kind of show off or whatever - she’ll maybe find herself drifting into Bobo’s arms and then they, y'know, really cause problems. But again, that’s me speculating, I have no idea what’s gonna happen next. I kinda wanna find out, though, I kind of wanna -

DELAYNE : It’s not often that we get to speculate about a fic, because a lot of times we’re reading stuff that’s a little more complete, and I’m with you, though, I am definitely curious, ‘cause I’m picturing - my speculation, because Bobo has the same kind of car as Nicole, they’re got matching cars, and we’ve got a car race. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : [sings] Go grease lighting, you’re burning up a quarter mile. Grease lighting, go grease lighting.

DELAYNE : [laughter] See now you’re breaking out into song, we don’t need the fic to do so.

DARKWICCAN : Well, somebody has to.

DELAYNE : It was really hard to hold myself back there, I gotta say.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, really, you were gonna join in? [laughter] I can pull up the karaoke track, we can do this.

DELAYNE : No, that’s okay. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Are you sure?

DELAYNE : Uh-huh.

DARKWICCAN : You can be my backing track.

DELAYNE : I’ve gotta save my voice, my brother has already looked up karaoke places when he’s visiting next week.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, that’s right, that’s right, you’re family’s visiting, that’s right. Well listen, I want video of you -

DELAYNE : OH, no.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] - I want video of you singing karaoke. I’m not saying I’m gonna post it anywhere, I’m just saying that you, to me, please send. I want -

DELAYNE : Maybe -

DARKWICCAN : - video of you singing karaoke.

DELAYNE : - maybe that could be a [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

DARKWICCAN : It’s been really cool. Okay, so we’ve talked about a ‘Rock ‘N Roll Kinda Love’, and we’ve sort of gushed about it, and we’ve said as much as we can say, again it’s early days yet in this fic, but we know that more is coming. And I know that we both have questions for sweet, maybe we can get her to spoil something, maybe not.

DELAYNE : [laughter] We can try.

DARKWICCAN : Y'know, we can try. Or maybe we can, and we’ll use that on a bonus track on our [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM], hey!

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Oh, we’re gonna be teasing everyone so much more now. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, totally. But before we can get to our next sewgment, where we get to talk to sweet, and pick her mind, and figure out what’s coming up next for the story, ‘Rock n Roll Kind of Love’, we must, of course, introduce this week’s[CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Lingering Lovers by Ron Goodwin and His Orchestra

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody and welcome back to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fan fiction. I am your host, DarkWIccan, and with me is my totally groovy co-host -

DELAYNE : [laughter] Delayne.

DARKWICCAN : And we are so excited to be back here with the interview portion of our show today, chatting with the author of the fic we were discussing in the first segment, ‘Rock n Roll Kind of Love’: sweet82405, but she’s letting us call her Sam today. So, Sam, welcome to the show.

SAM : Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

DARKWICCAN : And we’re excited to have you,

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : This is one of those fics, there seem to be a lot of fics popping up that were time centric, we got the 80s fic, we got the 1960s fic, with Boots, and then we’ve got a 90s fic that’s currently hitting the board, there’s a lot of like time piece fics popping up right now, so of course when you’re popped up I was like: oh yeah! Grease time.

[laughter]

SAM : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : I almost expected it to be a musical.

[laughter]

SAM : I’m not that talented, I cannot write song into stories like that, I tried once, and no, no, no.

DARKWICCAN : Didn’t work out for you?

SAM : Not at all.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, what got you into fanfiction in the first place?

SAM : OH, god. Basically I started this when I was maybe ten.

DARKWICCAN : Whoa!

SAM : Yeah. I wasn’t a huge reader to begin with, y'know, but I was one of those like, y'know, you go see movie, watch a T.V. show, and as soon as it was over you’re thinking of a whole other way that you’re changing it, or you’re adding something to it. So I actually started looking for something like that. I can tell you my very first fan fiction addiction was Buffy.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yes, Delayne and I can relate to that.

SAM : I was a huge, huge Buffy/Spike fan, so I started just looking online, and turned out, y'know, people were writing stories, I think this one person had like six, it was like the first six I ever read, and I got hooked right then and there. And I just, y'know, after I started following other fandoms, y'know I automatically looked for fanfiction on that and I actually started with fanfiction dot net, and I got hooked on that one, and it just grew from there. And then one day I decided to give it my shot, and it turned out to work out for me, ‘cause it’s like a form of therapy, in a way.

DARKWICCAN : Nice.

DELAYNE : I agree. That’s why I write.

SAM : Very, very therapeutic.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, kind of, fanfiction can a great form of, especially in terms of therapy, like catharsis, cause you can sometimes take stuff that’s going on in your life and just sort of flush it out.

SAM : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : And, yeah.

SAM : Especially, y'know, depends on the kind of fandom you’re following, y'know, it’s your own little corner, you like to see other people’s ideas, y'know, depending on the story, y'know, you didn’t like the way something ended, you change it to what you wanted, it make you happy.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, lots of fix-it fics out there.

DELAYNE : Fix it fics. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Had you not heard that term before, Dleayne?

DELAYNE : No, I - it just - the way it sounded, I just had to slow it down for my brain to spell it out, just to make sure I was getting it properly. I’m fine, keep going. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : So you started off with _Buffy_ , any chance you happened by the Kittenboard when it was kind of active, back in the early ‘00s?

SAM : I don’t think so, it doesn’t sound familiar to me. I really stuck to maybe like one authoer, she had like, I think it was when Tumblr or something first came out, and I just stuck with that until I ventured out, and there was like _Harry Potter_ had started coming out, so I jumped on that one, and found so many websites for those, and like it kind of grew for each thing that I - I’m kind of one those, y'know, that sticks with one fandom, and then once I start watching another one, I forget about that previous one, and jump back into this new one, so I have many under my belt, we’ll say that.

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha. Gotcha. So what drew you to the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom?

SAM : Honestly, it was one person, and I’m sure you guys know her well, heathermgirls?

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, Heather! Hey, Heather!

DELAYNE : Another shout-out to Heather. [laughter]

SAM : Yes, definitely - I blame her for this obsession now. It wasn’t even sort of like, oh, y'know, you just have to watch this”, no, she pushes, and pushes, until you have to watch it. And I’m like, Jesus, okay. And next thing you know it’s five thirty in the morning and you’re still in the middle of season one, like, oh , my god, I have to get to work in two hours but I can watch one more episode. [laughter] I blame her for this.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, well that’s rough, you watched the entire first season lie overnight, like on a work night?

SAM : Yeah. I started at literally like nine o’clock at night, and nothing’s on Netflix, I was like really heavy into _Glee_ right then, ‘cause I was writing my own stories with _Glee_ , and you’re like, y'know, after a while you can’t watch these episodes over and over and over again, i#’m like, there’s gotta be something out there, and of course I turn to her all the time like “What are you watching right now?” and like all caps: “ _WYNONNA EARP_ ”. Okay, alright, let’s just see what this is all about, and episode one, y'know, you’re like okay, maybe, y'know, I usually wait ‘til the third episode or so, and next thing I know I’m y'know I look like Penny from _Big Bang Theory_ when she’s got the gaming addiction. [laughter] And the sun’s coming up, and my eyes are glazed over, I’m like, yeah, one more episode, this will be fine. And yep. [Delayne howls with laughter] Yeah, it’s the whole story for the whole thing, y'know, I was very close to just calling off work like “Oh, yeah, I just didn’t sleep tonight” No, I have like three more episodes to get through. [laughter] Yeah, I totally blame her, and she takes full blame, she loves taking the blame for it.

DELAYNE : She’s patting herself on the back for it.

SAM : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : And we should too, because hey, that means you’re an author, and you’re on our show now, so.

SAM : I always follow her recommendations.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : When I started reading this, I got excited, we had just finished up our high school AU interview, and DW had then wished for a high school AU where Nicole lives in Purgatory, and Waverly moves there, and by golly, she got her wish.

[laughter]

SAM : I channeled it, I felt it.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : And you channeled it like pre -

DELAYNE : Yeah, before we even discussed it.

DARKWICCAN : You presaged it, because, yeah, exactly, and actually this - before we even recorded that episode, you presaged it.

SAM : It was to be.

DELAYNE : I wanna know why, y'know, why for this decision, ‘cause it’s different than most other -

SAM : Yeah.

DELAYNE : - fics.

SAM : Honestly, I tried writing it from Waverly’s point of view, and I found out I suck at that. Like, certain characters, depending on the stories that I write, I can’t write certain character’s point of view. Whether it’s, y'know, how well they’re portrayed on T.V. to story, I don’t know if it’s that way, but I just couldn’t do it justice. So I decided to try it backwards, so I was like okay, maybe y'know we’ll do it from Nicole’s point of view, y'know, sort of her being the new girl, y'know, we make Waverly, ‘cause everybody in the show knows Waverly as the sweet, y'know, girl in town, nobody really knows Nicole, so I thought, y'know, we’ll just kind of change the surround a little bit, and it kind of worked for me.

DELAYNE : Worked for me too, that was definitely interesting.

DARKWICCAN : I’d say it worked for all of us.

SAM : Yeah, I think again, like I tried writing Waverly’s part, and it just, it didn’t come out right, and I maybe got through a full chapter of it, and I read it, and was like, yeah, no, this is crap, I just, throw that away. Start over again, and it just finally appeared.

DARKWICCAN : Nice. Now, when you were initially developing this story, whether it was originally from Waverly’s point of view, or your re-write when you started over again from Nicole’s, you decided, hey, I’m gonna set this in the 1950s. And you make it clear in your notes that there’s no homophobia in this story, it’s essentially sort of a Pleasantville perfect world type scenario.

SAM : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So you’re avoiding the stuff that would be prevalent towards folks in the LGBT community in that time period. So is this because you were more interested in the aesthetic of that time, and not so much the socio-political climate?

SAM : Yes. So honestly, because you brought up Pleasantville, that’s actually how the story came about. It was one T.V. one night and I happened to see it, and I was like y'know this would actually make like a really cool story based one like these little ideas just pop into my head out of nowhere, and I didn’t want it to focus on that issue because during that time period in real life this - you’d never heard of gay people at that time, y'know, it was something hidden behind doors, it was y'know you can hear people all the time say oh, y'know, gays didn’t even really come around until like the 1980s and stuff. So I wanted to -

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Sorry.

SAM : No, I just hear everybody always say that, so I was like what if they had, y'know, been around in the 1950s, and it was something that, y'know, nobody looked down on. I didn’t want to make a story with that kind of background of, y'know, homophobia and stuff. I just wanted it to be a pure, simple story, without that kind of, I guess enemy coming at it. I wanted a happy story, I guess.

DELAYNE : But you also wanted the ‘50s, so to make it work -

SAM : Yes, I had to make -

DELAYNE : - you made a very simple rule.

DARKWICCAN : And I mean and that’s okay, ‘cause I mean there’s a lot of, y'know, I joked earlier about fics that fix, and y'know there are a lot of fics out that are set in a time period where elements like homophobia and things that were actually happening during the time, which weren’t  a lot of fun, are ignored because y'know straight people, man, they got all the great media, and they have all the stories, and it’s like you know what, it would be really nice for us to have a nice little sweetheart greaser love story that happens to be between two woman, and, y'know. And I’m sure out there somebody’s a written a sweetheart greaser story between two men as well, y'know. So, just not in this fandom, maybe in the _Supernatural_ fandom.

[laughter]

SAM : That _Grease_ story that nobody’s read yet.

DARKWICCAN : Exactly.

[laughter]

SAM : Danny and Kinicky love story, yeah.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, my gosh.

DELAYNE : Right?!

DARKWICCAN : Whaaat. Okay.

SAM : Make you think about that next time you watch that movie.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, right, you know, well -

DELAYNE : While reading this, pretty much, most - there was a lot of scenes from _Grease_ that popped into my head, I mean, really, yeah, multiple, multiple times.

DARKWICCAN : Although Nicole is a lot, I mean, Danny Zuko is a sweet guy, but Nicole is way sweeter. Yeah, yeah, she would never deny having known Waverly over the summer, if that was the premise of the story.

[laughter]

SAM : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : She would never have shaped it to be something that it wasn’t.

SAM : Yeah.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

SAM : So I really shape it from, y'know, there’s that _Grease_ aspect, there’s a Pleasantville aspect, y'know, and then there’s _Crybaby_ too, I watched -

DELAYNE : [yelling] Oh my god! [laughter] That was a question I wanted to ask. ‘Cause I fricking love _Crybaby_.

SAM : It’s so stupid, but it’s so funny, and so good, and I watched that to get ideas. I’m sitting there laughing the whole time at it, like this is so dumb, but like there’s little aspects of it that I did take from that, of like y'know how sweet he is, how cute she is, and I wanted Waverly to be like, y'know, in _Crybaby_ , y'know, the sweet, innocent little thing that’s y'know kind of turning towards y'know from square to drape kind of deal. So I thought about that a lot, y'know, and I thought about Pleasantville, like oh, y'know, it’s this happy little town, so I kind of picture that setting in Purgatory, and then you’ve got like the _Grease_ background with y'know the car races, the rival gang kinda deal, so it’s kind of those three stories mashed together.

DARKWICCAN : With just a little bit of  -

DELAYNE : Is there any _Happy Days_ thrown in as well?

SAM : I’m sorry?

DELAYNE : Is there any _Happy Days_ thrown in as well?

SAM : Oh, yeah -

DELAYNE : Kicking the juke box.

SAM : - that may show up now and then.

[laughter] You got the juke box, y'know, you got the bathroom kind of deal, where that’s the office for some people, so that might pop into the - I’ve thought about it for the next chapter, about it. So don’t be surprised if it’s in there.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Well I think any sort any of cultural, y'know, pop cultural call back that you can throw in there will be happily, happily embraced.

SAM : I try. Music itself is hard to get in there because there’s so much that I love, I’m a huge fifties fan. So, y'know, picking up a song for each one is, that’s my nightmare, ‘cause I’m like okay well this song would go perfect, but maybe this one, then I’ll look it up, okay, was this the year it was made, no it’s made in ’58, so I can’t use that one in here.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah.

SAM : So I don’t know how many billboards I’ve looked up, like okay, what musice came out in 1957. And it’s like, oh, it’s all Elvis, okay, that’s cool, and then I don’t even know these people, and that’s my hard part right there, like what song goes with what. How the 80s fic does it every time, perfectly, is beyond me, like that is pure genius, I read that and I’ like daamn, like I can’t get this.

DARKWICCAN : Well, do you have a beta, as you’re writing?

SAM : No, I do not.

DARKWICCAN : See that’s part of it, it’s a team effort between Pirate and Smurf, so -

SAM : Yeah.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - so it, yeah, and then Smurf is our age, and when I say our I mean Delayne and mine, I don’t know your age, you’re probably younger. But I’m gonna assume, and if not consider it flattery. So -

[laughter]

SAM : I have my age on my Twitter, so it is perfectly acknowledgeable, I am twenty-eight years old.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, here we go, oaky, so, yeah, you’re younger. But yeah, Smurf, like us, grew up in the 80s, so it’s one those things where it’s like - especially for those of us who grew up in the 80s -

DELAYNE : Yeah

DARKWICCAN : - it’s really like oh my god, they did it again. I totally remember that thing. Yeah, so. You don’t really, I’m sure that are older fans in the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom, there might be even fans who know who are in their sixties and seventies reading and writing fanfic, for all we know.

SAM : Oh, yeah.

DELAYNE : That would be awesome. If you are one of those, please Tweet at us. Somehow get a hold of us.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, ‘cause you’re clearly technology savvy. If you’re reading and writing fanfic. So -

DELAYNE : You’re making assumptions again.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, we’re making assumptions, but I mean, so, y'know, so, it’s great in that you don’t necessarily have that touchstone of readers who are going “Oh, I was there then, and I totally remember that thing at that time”.

SAM : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : You have a little bit more leeway, but I have to say, full on respect for really paying attention to when songs came out, and not pushing past the year 1957, that’s great.

SAM : It’s actually up to the year, I think I had chose like ’52, or something, and I looked at the billboard chart, and I’m like that music sucked that year, so I kind of went up a little higher. Oh that gives me like a broader range between 1950 and 1957, y'know, I wanted to keep it within the ‘50s, ‘cause then I did see like a sixties fic out there, which I literally just started on Friday, again, heathermgirls pushed that one on me too. So I -

DARKWICCAN : Was it Boots’s fic?

SAM : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, bootsncatz.

SAM : Yeah, and I saw that it was finished, so again, I haven’t slept in like two days because I keep reading it until like eleven o’clock at night, and I wake up at like quarter to seven for work, so I’m like, okay, one more chapter, one more chapter. But I -

DARKWICCAN : And then when you’re finished you can the episode we just recently posted where we interviewed her about that.

SAM : And I saw that, so I’m teasing myself on that, I’m like I got to listen but I want to read it first, and finish it, and not spoil myself. So it is on my plate there that I have to listen to this one too. [laughter] I’m falling behind a little bit.

DELAYNE : It’s okay, so am I.

DARKWICCAN : But enough about other people’s fics, let’s get back to yours.

DELAYNE : Yeah. Something else that is different, especially for the setting, is that we have all Earp sisters,

SAM : Yes.

DELAYNE : So, what was the decision to have Willa present, versus not present, y'know?

SAM : I - because there’s a lot of stories out there where, y'know, Willa has died in some form, whether it’s y'know by the supernatural way, whether it’s a car accident by a drunk driver kinda deal. I didn’t wanna go down that route, I didn’t wanna like a sad part of story, like yes, y'know, earlier these years, y'know, our sister Willa died, I wanted to have an actual family, y'know, mom, dad, all the sisters being there, I wasn’t gonna say y'know she was actually gonna be nice in this story, I wanted to kinda keep that mean streak to her, ‘cause I kinda liked that, y'know, she’s the oldest, she should have everything kinda deal. And she sees y'know her other sisters are kind of picking up easier when the move, y'know, she doesn’t have that many friends because she was the popular one at the other school, and Waverly was this, didn’t have any friends, didn’t talk to anybody, was super shy, and here all of sudden this girl finds her interesting, so I’m trying to go off like that jealous streak that’s why I want her to be a little bit mean, like why she became mean in the first place. So I wanted to keep that but just do it a little bit differently than in the actual show.

DELAYNE : Okay, yeah, ‘cause I knew a girl who had moved her senior year, and she was actually quite bitter about it, so Willa totally reminds me of her, and I think it works really well.

SAM : Yeah. So I -

DELAYNE : Of course it does show -

SAM : - I maybe changed like the age a little bit, like yeah I wanted her and Wynonna to be a little bit closer, I didn’t want huge age gaps between all these people. So I tried to compact it a little more, but yeah, I really just wanted Willa to be in there.

DELAYNE : Oh yeah, they wouldn’t be able to go to high school together if they were their age in canon.

SAM : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that’s just kind of the nature of beast with high school AUs, whatever form they take, you do have to change the ages around a little bit, make it a little more believable.

SAM : Yeah, mhm. But it also made it different too, because I don’t know what a Canadian high school is like, so I kinda set it in the U.S. without kind of mentioning that? So I’m kind of playing on the boarder there, ‘cause I don’t know what goes on up there, compared to here, what I’m used to, but in ‘50s style, so there was a lot the think about when I’m writing like a simple scene like that.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I think there’s, y'know, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with setting a _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction in the U.S.

SAM : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : There’s nothing wrong with it.

SAM : I honestly didn’t know it was in Canada when it first, like when I started watching, I’m like, oh this is pretty cool, ‘cause y'know you hear about Earp, and it’s like, oh, I’m pretty sure that was in the U.S., and then you’re like, oh that’s actually set in Canada, I’m like, oh I know nothing about Canada. All I know is they have really good poutine prize, that’s about it.

DARKWICCAN : And excellent health insurance. Yeah. [laughter] So we’ve talked a little bit about Willa being around, and she’s still kind of got y'know a bad attitude, and boy she does she ever, woof. But -

SAM : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - jealousy does not look good on her. But she doesn’t seem like the bad guy, she doesn’t seem like - at  least not yet, you might be setting something up here. And feel free to dodge this question if you need to.

SAM : No.

DARKWICCAN : But - no, not gonna, okay. But is there gonna be a clear villain for this story, is this more of a character driven piece, or just sort of have a snap shot of this place and time, or you got a heavy plot that you’re drumming up, you don’t have to give anything away, but just kind of curious, how deep you’re going with this story?

SAM : So without giving too much away, I am aiming toward, y'know, I have introduced Champ as this basic like asshole in a way, he thinks all - just like how he is in the show, he’s y'know football star, all the girls want him kinda deal, and then when he actually gets shot down he doesn’t take it well, so he’s y'know going after them non-stop, doesn’t quit. So have him as like one problem -

DELAYNE : I have been enjoying his daily -

SAM : Rock spray?

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Yeah, rock spray.

[laughter]

SAM : No joke, I actually did that a couple times to somebody in high school, so I kinda took it away from that.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Oh, god, that’s even better.

SAM : So that is real in my life, y'know, me and my friends use to do that to the people we hated, so it was like our payback for that, so I wanted to bring that into play, ‘cause I knew how Nicole felt with that, so I was that’s gonna awesome. So I do have him, I briefly introduced Bobo for like a split second. He is gonna become a bigger issue as the story goes on.

DARKWICCAN : Okay.

SAM : But again -

DELAYNE : I suspected that.

SAM : Yes, ‘cause I do love Bobo, and that story, and do like him as a bad guy, so I wanna introduce him more into that. And then Willa, I’m still playing around with that, how I wanna go with her, am I gonna make her like a bad person, is this something just a phase she’s going through, teenager Willa to adulthood, is she gonna get over this kind of deal. I’m still playing with that one right now, but the other two I have an idea as to where I’m going with that.

DARKWICCAN : Nice, okay, I think that’s yeah, that’s a nice teaser, a nice -

SAM : Without too much information, ‘cause I don’t wanna disappoint now, ‘cause I’ll say something, oh yeah, I’m gonna do this, and then literally my brain’ll be like that’s stupid, as I’m writing it, like this is just stupid.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, man. So in your research for this piece, and in kind of developing these versions of Waverly and Nicole, you came up with the idea of Nicole having a favorite celebrity -

SAM : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - and that celebrity being Elvis the Pelvis Presley.

SAM : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So that’s her favorite. Who is Waverly’s favorite 1950s celebrity?

SAM : This question is always on my mind, honestly, because Elvis is my favorite, y'know, any time I see anything Elvis I’m like, oh, my god. I should have lived in that time, honestly, this is not my time, I belong in the ‘50s. For Waverly, it’s so hard to say. I don’t want her to focus on one person, like I had pick y'know a Fats Domino song, it’s - I can’t say, ‘cause I don’t know, ‘cause I love so many, and it was hard for me to just narrow it down to Elvis for Nicole. So for Waverly I’m not entirely sure, I’m still playing with all those, I go through my playlist, y'know, I’d sit here as I’m typing, y'know, with my headphones on, listening to these stories, and I’m like oh, she’ll love this song, oh nope, she’ll love this one more, maybe this one, and then I get frustrated. And I’m like, you know what, just screw it, whatever it is, it’s just gonna pop up now. So I’m not sure yet, I have ideas as to who, but I honestly can’t narrow one down. That’s like asking me like who’s your favorite parent, I don’t know. I don’t know who’s my favorite parent.

DARKWICCAN : Well, would Waverly have interest in, I mean I know you’ve listed off musical artists, and Elvis was both music and film, was there like film celeb that Waverly might lean more toward, or a television... Because they did have T.V. in the 1950s.

SAM : They did.

DARKWICCAN : The _Betty White Show_ was on, so.

SAM : That’s true, that is true. [laughter] Now you’ve got my mind churning.

DELAYNE : Know you’ve made her decision more difficult, thank you.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, we’ll let you take that into your next writing session, like, oh, what would Waverly be watching on television...?

SAM : I’m literally writing it down right now. Now you got my mind turning.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Sorry not sorry?

SAM : More research on my end, thank you.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Hey, research is what makes these stories so beautiful and juicy and -

SAM : Worth reading.

DARKWICCAN : - well rounded, y'know. Yeah, worth reading, absolutely, because you tell, you can tell when an author doesn’t give two blips about researching and accuracy. Especially when you know about stuff, and you’re reading, and you’re like okay, that is so wrong, and they could have Googled that.

SAM : Uh-huh. That’s my problem with reading stories, is if I’m not fully invested within the fully chapter, I nix them, I’m sorry, I can’t. If there’s too many like things that I’m not okay with like you said, if you could have Googled this and got this information, and you’re just going off on you own, yeah, no thank you.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So, you heard it here many times, listeners, research is awesome, please do it, and also, if you can, beta readers are great too.

SAM : They are.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, Sam, it has been so great having you on.

SAM : I’m happy to be here.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, we’re glad to have you, and again, y'know, love what you’ve written so far, can’t wait to see where you take us next.

SAM : So am I, this are like a surprise for me too.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : I definitely enjoy their conversation.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, this was fantastic, this has been great. But before we let you go to drive Grease Lighting off into the sky...[laughter] We’ll wait for Delayne to recover, and then she will ask you our final question.

SAM : Alright.

DELAYNE : You’re stranded on a desert island, and can have only one fanfic to read. What is it?

SAM : Oh, my god. Uh, oh my god. If I had only one to read, I always go back to my very first Wayhaught story, and that was the softball fic.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, the one by GaySmurf! And Half, right?

SAM : Yes, that one was the one that actually got me into reading, of course, mention her again, heathermgirls. Pushed this one onto my lap, and she’s like “this is a story you need to read right now” and I was like alright, and, y'know, read it in one night. Wanted to read it again. And that’s my go to story, anytime I need something to read, I open that one right back up, and I start from beginning to end.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that one is ‘stop making eyes at me (but I don’t really want you to’ by Half and TheGaySmurf.

SAM : Yeah, that’s a big title, I can’t remember that title, I just go softball. [laughter] Everybody knows the softball fic, like oh my god, yes, that one.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Yeah, that’s a big title.

DARKWICCAN : Well we’ll definitely provided a link to that in our show notes, so that other folks who maybe haven’t already read the infamous softball fic -

SAM : If you haven’t, shame on you.

DARKWICCAN : - will get the opportunity -

SAM : Shame on you. [laughter] That is a classic.

DARKWICCAN : Well listen, it is a brilliant fic, and but I mean, hey, there have been a lot of fics posted since, and -

SAM : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - y'know, I mean, we’ve got a lot of really great authors in this fandom -

SAM : Yes, there are.

DARKWICCAN : - yourself included, so, y'know, it’s a lot of media to dig through.

SAM : Yes, I always tell people, start at the very last page on AO3, and move up to the most modern ones, ‘cause you will find some of the best stories from the beginning of when this show started, and then you’ll build yourself up to this, that’s how I did it, next thing you know there’s two hundred and fifty-seven stories saved on my computer, and I have no memory left.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Maybe time to get an extra hard drive.

SAM : Oh, man, I might have to.

DARKWICCAN : Extra storage. Might be time. To get a terabyte drive and you can just shove like -

SAM : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So, yeah. Okay, well I know I’ve definitely found some excellent gems in the back ninety of AO3, so I completely concur with your statement there. And on that note, we’re gonna let you go, so you can get back to your notebook, or maybe get back to working your way up through all those pages of AO3.

SAM : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : It has been, again I say, it has been great having you on, and we look forward to seeing what comes next.

SAM : I thank you guys, this was awesome, and I would love to do it again sometime.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for joining us. Tremendous thanks to Sweet82405 for joining us on the show to chat about her work 'Rock n Roll Kind of Love'! Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro and the[CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM].

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story and Spike in the Rail by Darren Korb; Linger Lovers by Ron Goodwin and His Orchestra; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

            If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

            Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast


	22. Knight Takes Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week DW and Delayne strap on their plate armor and mount their steeds as they take a tour through their favorite Medieval AU fics!
> 
> Then they drag Haugtbreaker back kicking and screaming to talk about their fic 'At Her Service'.

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://http://efapodcast.com/knight-takes-queen)

 

Read the Fics! 

[Crowns of Rust](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11893212) by Thrandunt

 

[In The Service of the Queen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12230934) by retzcat (must be a registered AO3 user to access)

 

[At Her Service](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7660573) by HaughtBreaker

 

 

 

The fic Haughtbreaker wishes would come back from the dead is: [Kindred Spirits](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5114582) by jaybear1701 (and others)

 

Episode Transcript for the Deaf and HOH by Climb and MrsBlueBacon!

 

EFA Episode 22 - KNIGHT TAKES QUEEN

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC : Write My Story by Olly Anna

 

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the Earp Fiction Addiction, a fan podcast all about Wynonna Earp fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the Wynonna Earp fandom.

 

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

 

DARKWICCAN : Thanks, Announcer Guy, and welcome everybody to the Earp Fiction Addition podcast  all about Wynonna Earp fanfiction. I’m your host, Dark Wiccan, and with me is my co-host…

 

DELAYNE : Hi, It’s Delayne!

 

DARKWICCAN : And this week we are dusting off our old sets of armor from our Ren-Fair Days. I’ve got my jerkin on and my baggy, knee breeches. [laughter]

 

DELAYNE : [laughter] I do have a..I never got a tunic, but I do have a recurve bow and a nice leather, handmade quiver, so…

 

DARKWICCAN : I have a single-handed sword that suits me nicely because I am a short person. Me trying to carry around a broadsword just would’ve been comical.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter] Anyone trying to carry about a broadsword, that’s just too much for me.

 

DARKWICCAN : No, not anyone, there are dudes, like football-sized dudes, who wear a broadsword and it just looks like they just have a nice little dagger. They’re just massive, these massive dudes who just hulk around. But they’re usually the first to drop at Renaissance fairs because they overestimate their ability to handle full-plate armor for eight hours in the sun.

 

DELAYNE : Yeah.

 

DARKWICCAN : And this week, if you haven’t guessed yet, we are talking about our favorite medieval/Renaissance-time AU’s in the Wynonna Earp fanfic fandom. And this week, we have narrowed it down to three, instead of four, so that’s nice because we have a little bit more time to talk about each fic before we move on to our second segment.

 

So we’ve cheekily titled this episode “Knight Takes Queen” because that seems to be the trend.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter] Umm, yeah…well…

 

DARKWICCAN : Well, we’ve got a princess.

 

DELAYNE : We’ve got princess, and we’ve got queen once, and princess the other two times.

 

DARKWICCAN : Right. But really, we’ve always got a knight of some sort, or someone on their way to becoming a knight. Basically knighthood is in their future or they already are one. It’s a thing. [laughter] So, I’ve got to say, I enjoy the fact that we’ve got, ya know, lady knights.

 

DELAYNE : Not just knights, Master of Arms even, so ranked.

 

DARKWICCAN : Yes, ranked and held in esteem. I mean that’s really cool because that didn’t actually happen for the most part. You know, there are scattered instances that usually…but what’s usually happening there is a woman pretending to be a man who managed to get knighted and all that jazz, in actual history. But you know, it’s something that you don’t hear about a lot, and so it’s been kinda fun reading through these fantastical stories where women can get to be knights, and just as dashing.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter] Yeah, and you know what’s also exciting?

 

DARKWICCAN : What?

 

DELAYNE : Out of the three of these fics, it’s not always the same roles that we would expect.

 

DARKWICCAN : That right, that’s right! And I think when you think about it…and this is gonna be a WayHaught thing, of course…when you think about it typically, you’ve got Nicole, who canon from the show is a cop, so you’re naturally going to put her in the role of knight most of the time. But that’s not always the case in these fics and that’s pretty darn cool, I think.

 

DELAYNE : Yeah, I enjoy that part. So yeah, let’s talk about some fic.

 

DARKWICCAN : Okay, let’s do this. So the first fic today is called “Crowns of Rust” by Thrandunt, and I hope I’m pronouncing that right. T-H-R-A-N-D-U-N-T, Thrandunt. And in this piece, we have a situation where Nicole is a farmhand who has pursued knighthood from an early age and Waverly is a princess.

 

DELAYNE : I actually wrote Nicole as a peasant because that’s generally…but yeah, I guess it does say “farmhand” properly, but, lower-class versus royalty.

 

DARKWICCAN : Yes. Yeah, and let’s see, she and Nicole meet when Nicole dashes out in front of the royal caravan to save her cat.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter] An orange cat!

 

DARKWICCAN : Yes, an orange cat. And this is when they’re very young. I think it was like Waverly’s birthday or something?

 

DELAYNE : Yeah, it was a birthday parade through town for Waverly when they’re eight.

 

DARKWICCAN : When she’s eight, that’s right, yeah. And of course immediately, Waverly being a little ball of happiness and sunshine, is like “who is this adorable stranger with a cat?”

 

DELAYNE : “Hi, what’s your cat’s name?” [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : So they become friends and over the years, grow up together. Now this piece is unfinished, correct?

 

DELAYNE : Yes

 

DARKWICCAN : It’s only four chapters...six chapters in at this point.

 

DELAYNE : Last update was in December; almost nine thousand words.

 

DARKWICCAN : But despite that, the author, Thrandunt, doesn’t tarry a lot of time in the youth. They basically give us the establishment of ‘this is how they met and became friends’ and we know they see each other frequently over time and then Nicole goes off to train for knighthood.

 

DELAYNE : Yep, soldier in training and then they’ll join the guard and then...I think the author lists the steps that a knight would go through being in training, then a soldier, then something else, then a knight.

 

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and so what that does, is that takes Nicole away from the kingdom for awhile as she trains, or at least away from the castle, while she trains, the royal Homestead, ah haha…

 

DELAYNE : [laughter] Away from her very good friend, the princess, Waverly.

 

DARKWICCAN : Yes. And so while Nicole is away and in training, training under Dolls, of course, things are not going well back at home. Sounds like the not-so-good King Ward, or whatever his name is, I can’t remember with Thrandunt, if Thrandunt renamed his character or not, but we’re just going to call him King Ward. It sounds like he’s not doing well with handling the kingdom’s finances or political standing with neighboring kingdoms. And so there have been skirmishes on the borderlands that are encroaching further into the kingdom and endangering the people of the kingdom, and endangering Ward as king and so, in an effort to bring peace, he does what all kings do…

 

DELAYNE : Arrange a marriage!

 

DARKWICCAN : Arrange a marriage with a DICK.

 

[laughter]

 

DELAYNE : [mimics Champ Hardy] “My name is Champ. I told you to call me Champ!” I lost my shit with that line!

 

DARKWICCAN : That was so, like oh my god, I can totally see that. I can totally see this Prince James or what have you, and being just…ahhh…complaining because people aren’t calling him ‘Champ’. It’s like…What prince in their right mind would want to be called Champ?

 

[laughter]

 

DELAYNE : To be called a ‘champion’ would’ve been a thing back in the day, so why not?

 

DARKWICCAN : And stop me if I’m wrong, I don’t think I am in this story, Champ is his usual charming self. But he’s basically calling Waverly stupid for thinking about Nicole, and Nicole becoming a knight, and all this stuff because where he’s from, women can’t aspire to those things and you have to be born at a certain station to qualify to be a knight. And really that’s correct historically, [laughter] but that is not the way things are in Waverly’s kingdom. In Waverly’s land, it sounds like it’s a little bit more of democracy-ish, except they have a king, a pesky-pesky monarch. But essentially, if you work hard and you train, and you raise yourself up from your station, you can become a knight regardless. Or you can become…you can join a higher level within the classes regardless of where you started from. So that’s kinda cool.

 

So basically Waverly is stuck in this not-so-great situation, arranged to marry Champ, and this is all unbeknownst to Nicole, who is away at training. And finally Nicole returns from her training trip and it’s really cute. She goes and she gets these little apple-flowers, and she picks up sunflowers on the road, and she’s got this cute little bouquet, and she goes to say hi to Waverly and that’s when Waverly kinda drops a couple of bombs. [laughter]

 

DELAYNE : UH YEAH.

 

DARKWICCAN : And one of them isn’t so bad, but the other one is the information about the arranged marriage situation, and yeah, that’s where we left offish…no no, there’s one more chapter after that.

 

DELAYNE : Yes, there is one more chapter and it’s even more cliffhangery.

 

DARKWICCAN : Oh stupid cliffhangers! Why must we be dangled?? I mean, I know why…

 

[laughter]

 

DELAYNE : Cause it’s effective, that’s why.

 

DARKWICCAN : It is, it is very effective. It is. Uh, dang it. It’s not, it’s not fair, authors using these effective devices on us.

 

DELAYNE : To make us want more. [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [noises of frustration] Yeah, absolutely, and I just reminded myself of what the second cliffhanger is and HOLY MOLY it’s a cliffhanger! Thrandunt! Ouch, Man!

 

DELAYNE : OUCH.

 

DARKWICCAN : Ouch! So what’s next, Delayne?

 

DELAYNE : What’s next is: “In The Service Of The Queen” by Retzcat. And in this one, oh I love the opening sequence…

 

DARKWICCAN : Oh, me too, it’s really good.

 

DELAYNE : Cause we do, we play the pronoun game, and it makes you wonder who is this “Majesty” and then we learn, as the long red hair cascades down her shoulders, and she says “Quit calling me ‘Your Majesty! You’re supposed to call me Nicole! We’ve known each other since we were children!”

 

DARKWICCAN : Yes. Yes.

 

DELAYNE : And as that revelation comes, and you go, wait a minute, that means Waverly is a knight!  [laughter] And when are we gonna see Waverly as a knight? And her entrance, I had to actually reread the comment, yeah I had to reread that and double-check...Waverly makes her entrance not as obvious, but she makes a comment, uh…Waverly has adjusted to being in the knighthood by being very much one of the guys.

 

DARKWICCAN : Hahaha. Yep. Yes, and Waverly is a new visitor to Nicole’s kingdom.

 

DELAYNE : Yes, Waverly is a knight from a neighboring kingdom.

 

DARKWICCAN : Yes, and has therefore never met the queen, doesn’t know what the queen looks like, probably making assumptions about Her Majesty’s appearance, and how she dresses and whatnot, and let’s just…Waverly, Sir Waverly puts her foot in it _sooo_ deep.

 

[laughter]

 

DELAYNE : And this story is complete, so we get the whole story here.

 

DARKWICCAN : And in just four chapters, correct?

 

DELAYNE : Yep, just four chapters; 44,000 words.

 

DARKWICCAN : Long chapters.

 

DELAYNE : It’s definitely a good hearty story, like we’re having some kind of feast here. It’s roasted boar. [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : It’s definitely a feast of words. It’s a feast…calling this fic a hearty feast is an excellent description. And it’s really interesting to see, in many ways, the Queen Nicole is very worldly and wise and experienced, and she handles her administrative, regal duties really quite excellently, and with a good insight and good instinct. But when it comes to interpersonal relationships of the romantic type, she’s actually quite innocent. So this is flip on that as well because typically we see Nicole being the one who knows her way around, knows what she wants, doesn’t want to wait kind of thing, and being very confident in herself in that way. But in this instance, it’s Waverly.

 

DELAYNE : Yeah, and it took me by surprise, definitely. I enjoyed this story very much because we flipped all of these normal things completely around.

 

DARKWICCAN : And one of the things that happens in this story…oh gosh, I don’t know if this counts too heavily into spoiler territory, ah man…

 

DELAYNE : I was going to say it’s really hard to talk about this one without giving all of it away because…

 

DARKWICCAN : Well…Waverly…I think we can frame it this way, and if not, I can cut this out later. Waverly thinks that her parentage is one thing and then finds out it’s another thing, which relates to the canon of the television show as well.

 

DELAYNE : Yes, I do like how they did that. It was a neat twist.

 

DARKWICCAN : It was. It was a neat twist. And also a nice kinda touchstone back to the show as well. So Retzcat did a really good job of using these elements from the show, but formulating them and twisting them and manipulating them to be something completely fresh in her own writing here. And the writing is quite good. Sometimes it feels like they go in a little bit in a circle, kind of maybe over-explaining, kinda maybe going a little…spending a little more time in a conversation than really maybe was necessary, but it’s still so good that you’re like, it’s okay, maybe we’ll just hang out here a little longer, that’s cool.

 

DELAYNE : Okay, yeah, I understand what you’re saying. I wouldn’t have known how to put it into words, but yeah, I was getting a…it wasn’t so much as circling…I mean, the pacing was good but there were moments where it wasn’t quite rushing, but you’re saying more like standing still but…

 

DARKWICCAN : More like we’ve hit on this concept long enough, we can move on kind of a thing.

 

DELAYNE : Yeah.

 

DARKWICCAN : But again, the writing is so good that you may not notice it. We read so many fics that we’re sorta hyper aware, so ya know, that could just be an _us_ thing. But the writing is good enough that you’re just like, okay sure, we’ll just hang out here in this story…

 

DELAYNE : And the story idea is fantastic ,so I mean…

 

DARKWICCAN : Exactly. Overall the story concept is great and the execution is darn good. Darn it.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter] One thing that I do miss in this story is we don’t have Wynonna.

 

DARKWICCAN : We don’t have Wynonna and I can’t say that I miss her necessarily in this story.

 

DELAYNE : Right. It doesn’t…okay…

 

DARKWICCAN : She wouldn’t fit. Her character type wouldn’t fit here.

 

DELAYNE : Yeah.

 

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I don’t know how else to…I love Wynonna. Here’s the thing: I came for the gay, but stayed for the cray. I love every character in this show, on this show.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter] I have not heard that. I came for gay and stayed for the cray?

 

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. I love Wynonna so much. She is probably one of the only straight characters that I would have ever been like ride or die for. I love her. That being said, she would not work in this story.

 

DELAYNE : I agree and that’s…I mean, I kept waiting for her, but then it was like, you’re right. Like how would she even fit in here? So…

 

DARKWICCAN : She wouldn’t, and that’s okay, because this isn’t a Wynonna story. It definitely is a WayHaught story. And it’s a really well-written one.

 

DELAYNE : Yes.

 

DARKWICCAN : And again, that is “In The Service Of The Queen” by Retzcat. Which brings us to our final fic today. It’s a HaughtBreaker fic and it is: “At Her Service”, which is a lovely fake medieval story…

 

[laughter]

 

DELAYNE : I noticed a tag as I was pulling everything up to start this. Alternative Universe. Medieval. **Historically Inaccurate**.

 

DARKWICCAN: YES.

 

DELAYNE : YEAH. I’m not even gonna try…we’re just gonna…it was more like a medieval fantasy setting for me.

 

DARKWICCAN : Exactly, it’s more like a medieval fantasy-type situation. I just love this story so much. HaughtBreaker is such a cool writer and person. Yeah, Nic, we can call HaughtBreaker “Nic” because that’ her name. Nic is just the bee’s knees…is just such a cool, cool individual and such a great writer! I keep saying that, just, talk about going in circles.

 

DELAYNE : This story. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so we do have, as Nicole is the knight and Waverly is the princess, but the surprise about…is it…how much…the surprise about who the queen is…

 

DARKWICCAN : Oh, I think you can give that away.

 

DELAYNE : As Nicole gets back from war. She was gone for many, many years on the outskirts of the kingdom, and gets back, cause the king had just passed…to find Wynonna with the crown. And of course, they’re best buddies!

 

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I love that. In this case, it was a matter of Nicole and Wynonna being besties growing up and Waverly sort of being the one left behind. So in this case…

 

DELAYNE : The annoying little sister.

 

DARKWICCAN : The annoying little sister. This little person following them around while they’re trying to do big-kid stuff. So yeah, now Nicole returns to the kingdom and Wynonna is queen, dawg, like what up?!

 

[laughter]

 

DELAYNE : Nic really writes Wynonna so well and even in this setting, it’s unbelievable how hilarious Wynonna comes across.

 

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely. Nic doesn’t shy away from using contemporary language in this, so it’s sort of a…sometimes they speak in semi-regal tones, but most of the time, they’re just Wynonna and Waverly. In fact, that’s something I wanted to ask Nic about is the kinda…going back and forth…the language style. This is medieval fantasy, but is this like _A Knight’s Tale_ medieval fantasy? It feels like it. It feels like it, right? At least we don’t have the anachronistic [ph] soundtrack.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter] Yeah, going back to movies, I think that was the first DVD I ever owned.

 

DARKWICCAN : Oh seriously? Oh that’s hilarious. But yeah, anyway…

 

DELAYNE : Yeah, I was scrolling past this line: “Are you seriously going to come at me with that ‘Your Highness’ crap?”

 

[laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : Circling back around a little bit, Nicole is coming back from war on the borderlands and she’s been injured, and so as a result, she’s benched. Which just drives her nuts.

 

DELAYNE : Yeah, because she’s high up in the um…she’s like the…

 

DARKWICCAN : Second in command almost, it seems like. So there’s that, but also, she’s constantly having to prove herself because she’s the only woman in this all male army. So she doesn’t want to be viewed as weak or needing special attention or anything like that. So, of course, she’s really frustrated because she’s Wynonna’s best friend, and she gets back to the kingdom and she’s injured. So Wynonna’s like: while you’re benched, you’re gonna be benched in the castle, in a posh suite, and tended to by the royal doctor. And Nicole is like NO NO NO. This is her worst nightmare. Don’t do this to me. But she has to ultimately because Wynonna is the queen and she orders it and she pulls rank.

 

DELAYNE : And then it gets better. You want back in the game? I’ve got a job for you.

 

DARKWICCAN : Uh huh…yeah. So Miss Waverly doesn’t appreciate being kept under guard, and lock and key. Now the reason why is: the kingdom is currently not in the strongest position. They’ve been fighting these wars for awhile. Their king is dead; the queen has yet to be made officially the queen. So things are a little shaky right now. So as a result, Wynonna has Waverly under guard. Or tries to. _Tries to_ have Waverly under guard. And Waverly doesn’t cotton to this much, so she likes to dress up as a peasant and go off into the market and do a little chitchatting, a little shopping, and then come back, and you know…That’s really the length and the breadth of her deviousness. She’s not trying to do anything more than get some fresh air.

 

DELAYNE : I just don’t want to be under guard. I don’t want these people giving me free stuff because I’m a princess. I want to pay them for their things.

 

DARKWICCAN : Exactly. So it’s not a huge want or a huge desire. It’s pretty small. It’s pretty basic, but because of her status, it is dangerous. And so we encounter some danger. And luckily Nicole is there by happenstance, purely by happenstance, and manages to step in and save Waverly’s life essentially. Well, not essentially, actually. And Wynonna is furious. She’s not furious Nicole saved her sister’s life. She’s furious that her sister put herself in a position where her life needed to be saved.

 

DELAYNE : Yes.

 

DARKWICCAN : So all Nicole wants is to get back into the royal forces essentially; she wants to be put back in service. And so Wynonna says, “You wanna be in service? Sure.”

 

DELAYNE : Fine then. You are now her personal guard. You have to ensure that Waverly is safe at all times.

 

DARKWICCAN : So brilliantly, HaughtBreaker Nic has put us in the perfect, farcical scenario where Waverly and Nicole have to be around each other all the time.

 

DELAYNE : And it’s not easy at first, ya know, cause Nicole is Wynonna’s friend and what Waverly remembers growing up is they were always ditching her because she was the little sister.

 

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, but what’s also interesting is Waverly sorta comes at Nicole, forgive me for phrasing it this way, but I think you’ll find it funny. She comes at Nicole tits out. She’s like, she’s flirting hardcore with Nicole. And of course, Nicole’s completely flustered, like what the hell’s going on?  And we find out later why Waverly was kinda doing this, ya know, being a little bit freewheeling, being a little bit intense, a little bit in your face, and outspoken and very flirtatious. We find out why later. Right? Do you think…we shouldn’t spoil that reason?

 

DELAYNE : Right! Especially since I’m trying to think of exactly what you’re talking about and this was the one I read…I’ve read a lot of other stuff since then, so I’m honestly not remembering. [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : So, hopefully that clears things up. I just sent you a message.

 

[laughter, muttering]

 

DELAYNE : OH! Right, right right. Okay!

 

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, let’s not spoil that because that was a recent bomb-drop. So, we’ll leave that be discovered by you readers to go in and discover when you read.

 

DELAYNE : Yeah, there’s a couple of cliffhangers associated with that. A couple things there, yeah.

 

DARKWICCAN : So once Nicole is assigned as Waverly’s personal guard, Waverly then works really hard to try to ditch Nicole. Every turn she can possible make, she’s trying to figure out how to weasel out from under Nicole’s gaze and is not successful. But, so as a result they end up getting into some scrapes….that aren’t necessarily funny.

 

DELAYNE : No, no, with all the humor….it’s like oh, ow…man! [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : Yep, yep. So I know I’ve got a few questions for Nic and I think you do too. So we managed to talk Nic into coming back on the show to talk to us about this story, and so we’ll be talking with them after the break. But before we do that, couple of things…

 

[CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM] And something I mentioned last time is audiobooks seem to be a thing that fans, those who enjoy fanfic want, so we’ve started doing audiobooks of popular titles.

 

DELAYNE : DW has started doing audio. [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : EFA, Earp Fiction Addiction audiobooks. It’s a thing now and in order to produce these things, [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

[MUSIC: Knights of the Sea by Darren Korb]

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody and welcome back to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan and with me is my co-host--

 

DELAYNE : Delayne

 

DARKWICCAN : And we are here this afternoon talking with the amazing Haughtbreaker. We convinced them to come back on the show and have a chat with us about their fantastic story, _At Her Service_. So can we call you Nic again, Nic?

 

NIC : Yeah, you can.

 

DARKWICCAN : Alright, fantastic. Welcome back to the show.

 

NIC : Thanks. Thank you very much.

 

DARKWICCAN : So, so I have to ask you. You recently went to MegaCon and you also, you did some hands on research for this fic while you were there.

 

NIC : You could call it that, yeah.

 

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, went to Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament.

 

NIC : Exactly. Chicken and jousting.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : Alright. Did any of the chickens joust though. Was that, diid that happen or…?

 

NIC : They did not, but there was like a falcon that they warned that no one put their hands up cause the bird might try to bite them.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] That doesn’t seem like, what an environment for that poor bird to be surrounded by its fried brethren. It's not, it's not allowed to partake. It’s surrounded by this sumptuous feast. Cause falcons are meat eaters.

 

NIC : Well, to be fair, while the falcon was out, they were serving the tomato bisque.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter] Falcons probably like “yeah, I’ll pass on that”.

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Ok wait. They served a bisque. Did you have to eat it like from the bowl like just pouring it in your mouth, or did they provide you with like spoons.

 

NIC : No, no. There were no utensils in medieval times, therefore there would be no utensils at Medieval Times.

 

DARKWICCAN : Did they refill your Pepsi though?

 

NIC : They did.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter]

 

NIC : It was like “I’m trying to cut back on soda, but I’m at Medieval Times and they have to have Pepsi.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter]

 

NIC : Of course, that was after the twenty dollar alcoholic drink I bought.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : Wow! Was it just, like nothing but alcohol. Like there was nothing to cut it? I mean, twenty bucks, that’s like a bottle of vodka.

 

NIC : Well, I got to keep the glass, so.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : Ok.

 

NIC : Ya know, the drink was probably like a dollar and the glass was like nineteen.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter} I’m wondering what the retail mark-up on that glass is. Like how much does it cost to purchase to sell.

 

NIC : Uh, probably not much.

 

DARKWICCAN : Not much, yeah. Yeah, probably makin’ bank money, but hey, it’s all about the experience, right?

 

NIC : Yeahya [ph]

 

DARKWICCAN : Will you be taking anything from your experience at Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament to incorporate into _At Her Service_ as you go forward with this story?

 

NIC : Umm, nothing at all, like…

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter]

 

NIC : Like I think another idea spawned cause I went with Jaybear1701 and I think she just got a fic idea. I was like “great, now we’re both writing knight fics”.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Well, maybe hers will be a day fic, so that’ll be the difference.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

NIC : [laughter] No, but I think. I think she’s changing it to like a Renaissance Fair instead of like actually being in medieval times.

 

DARKWICCAN : Oh, gotcha.

 

NIC : Oh, no, no. It’s supposed to be they both work at Medieval Times.

 

DARKWICCAN : I am looking forward to that. I am looking...Jaybear. If this airs before you post that, just know that we are looking forward to that story.

 

DELAYNE : Indeed. Ok, so when we have to interview Jaybear for that one, we’ll know what spawned it. But I wanna know from you Nic, why a medieval fic and what inspired you?

 

NIC : Umm, it’s like, I don’t know. I just super like knights, I super love Renaissance Fairs and like jousting. I mean who doesn’t? And then you know you just make it gay, so.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter]

 

DELAYNE : Well, there wasn’t like a specific show or movie or something that really got the ball rolling with this one?

 

NIC : Well, when I started writing it, umm, like I had a tone that I wanted. And it was the same tone that would be _A Knights Tale_.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter] Uh, yeah. I feel that. Coincidentally, _A Knights Tale_ was the first DVD I ever purchased.

 

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

 

NIC : Nice.

 

DARKWICCAN : And I think that actually answers what my question was gonna be. Which was you have a mix of period and contemporary language in here, umm, so are you. I’m assuming you’re taking that from the influence of _A Knights Tale_ , but is it also that you’re working for kind of a more fantastical, anytime medieval time period, or is it more of a matter of having the characters a little more relatable and understandable.

 

NIC : Well, let me tell you. I did some research, ya know. And I wanted to be as accurate as possible, but then I realized that I am lazy and that wouldn’t happen.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

NIC : Like I’ve tried to write a period, like I’d written period fic before, like I wrote a Cophine fic that was based on the, also another Heath Ledger movie, _Casanova_. So it like, the fic went along that line, instead of your standard period fic. So uh, like, and I started it out really elegant and everything and then five chapters in it was like I was reading a modern day fic. I was like “ok, so I kept that continuity going”. So that’s why if you look at my fic on AO3, you will see that it is marked as historically inaccurate.

 

DELAYNE : I believe I actually mentioned that in the first part. Did I?

 

DARKWICCAN : Yes. Yes, you did, you did, yeah. But ya know, there’s something so fun and charming and amusing about characters in a period, in period settings speaking anachronistically. Especially, I mean your Wynonna, as usual, your Wynonna is hilarious, so it’s really fun to see her stretch her wings as it were. And really not hold anything back, cause she doesn’t have to cause she’s the Queen and she is the biggest queen that has ever. No I’m kidding. Sorry, that’s a line out of _You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown_. Umm.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter] Speaking of Wynonna. Umm, ya know, everyone, all of us. We all love the WynHaught brotp. Umm, so the way, the way that you write them being friends since childhood. Was it just for your love of the brotp or is there, ya know, is there more to their relationship?

 

NIC : Well, I mean, I don’t know what you mean by “more to their relationship”, I mean.

 

DELAYNE : More to their friendship. Their relationship being, them being childhood BFFs.

 

NIC : I mean, there’s no secret, underhanded meaning. I just really needed plotline in which it would allow Nicole access to Waverly.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] So it’s a friendship of convenience is what you’re saying.

 

NIC : It was so convenient.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter]

 

NIC : I mean, why think of a good reason, ya know?

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Well, we’ll give you this. If you wanna try and justify it more, this is the opportunity.

 

NIC : I mean, I really wanted to start the fic off to a good start that would cause the most dramatic influence in Waverly’s day to day life.

 

DARKWICCAN : That’s good. That’s a good answer. If you want, I can cut around the previous answer. We can just go with that. [laughter]

 

NIC : [laughter] I don’t even know what I just said.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter] That’s what I was gathering.

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Well, umm, well, you kinda have, you kinda have Nicole filling the shoes of Willa in a sense in that you’ve got, ya know, Nicole and, young Nicole and young Wynonna as thick as thieves with poor little Waverly trailing behind going “I wanna play too”, so.

 

NIC : Well, I mean...

 

DELAYNE : Well, I don’t know. I just like it, so I was hoping you could just tell me more about it.

 

NIC : I, I did just like...for me, like the saddest thing about the show is that Wynonna has like no friends. And like one friend comes to town, oh, and she has no face.

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Yeah.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

NIC : So I always felt like if Wynonna and Nicole had grew up together, they’re so opposite, but the kind of opposite where they could pick on eachother like incessantly.

 

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah.

 

DELAYNE : I like that answer, that’s a good answer.

 

DARKWICCAN : [unintelligible] kind of friendship, yeah.

 

DELAYNE : They balance each other.

 

NIC : Wynonna needs friends too.

 

DARKWICCAN : Wynonna does need friends. It seems like on the show they’re trying to set up, or have set up a brotp between Nicole and Wynonna. Which I’m looking forward to seeing more of in the new season coming soon. Ok, anyway.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

NIC : Season three. Hashtag _Wynonna Earp_ Season Three. Hashtag Renew _Wynonna Earp_.

 

DARKWICCAN : Hashtag Renew _Wynonna Earp_ [said at the same time as NIC]. Yes.

 

DARKWICCAN : Oh, so we have this established thing you’ve got where we know that Wynonna and Nicole were thick as thieves growing up and Waverly was kind of always on the outside, but then Nicole goes off to war as a soldier and a knight and then comes back. Um, because of the death of the King. King Ward. Is his name Ward? Did you change his name or?

 

NIC : I don’t think I ever mentioned his name. It was the King.

 

DARKWICCAN : Ok, so the King has died. Long live the Queen. And so Wynonna is poised to take the throne, and so the army returns. And due to Waverly making a few mistakes in an effort to try to have a bit more freedom, Nicole ends up being her personal guard.

 

NIC : Yep.

 

DARKWICCAN : Now, I said in the first segment that its rather shocking how essentially Waverly comes at Nicole tits out.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : Like she is flirting so hard with Nicole. So, and it’s such an unexpected thing for Nicole because Nicole just remembers this little brat following them around and that’s not what Waverly is anymore. Well, she’s still kind of a brat, but she’s certainly not little. So is Waverly doing this because she wants to exercise some last bit of freedom prior to her arranged marriage or is there a genuine attraction there or...what is happening? I know that Nicole is thinking the same thing.

 

NIC : Are you really asking if there is a genuine attraction to Nicole Haught?

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : Well, obviously. No, no, of course there is. Of course there is, but what I’m saying is that what is driving Waverly or is it really more that she’s trying to manipulate.

 

NIC : Well, I don’t really think it’s like a manipulation so much as. Ya know it’s definitely the freedom thing but it’s like Waverly’s not...it’s not canon Waverly. She’s basically been stuck in a castle her whole life other than the times that she can escape, so it’s not the same Waverly that’s been dating Champ for like four years. She’s been engaged to some dude, but they’ve never really spent alone time together. So I mean after like twenty one years or so of being the innocent princess, locked away. I mean Nicole Haught walks in the door, but that’s pretty much it. There’s no like underlying devious intent.

 

DARKWICCAN : Ok. I look forward to seeing how things continue to play out there.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter] Uh, definitely look forward because you like to leave us hanging when you end a chapter, so my question is do you enjoy writing cliffhangers?

 

NIC : Umm, so I watch a lot of Gordon Ramsey. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched a Gordon Ramsey show, but every single commercial break is a cliffhanger for a Gordon Ramsey Show.

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Yeah. So Gordon Ramsey made you do it is what you’re saying.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

NIC : Gordon Ramsey is an inspiration of mine so much in my writing.

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter]

 

DELAYNE : I’m trying to calculate how often I see the f-word.

 

DARKWICCAN : Or how many scenes take place in kitchens.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter] We actually do have a kitchen scene don’t we.

 

NIC : There is a kitchen scene in _At Her Service_.

 

DELAYNE : Yeah. Yeah.

 

NIC : I mean, not a Wayhaught kitchen scene, I mean. Umm, but I do...

 

DARKWICCAN : Oh God. You know what you have to do now, Nic. You know what you have to do now in some story of yours. In some story of yours you have to do the “idiot sandwich thing” that Gordon Ramsey does. You have to.

 

NIC : [laughter] “What am I? I’m an idiot sandwich.”

 

DARKWICCAN : Yes. [laughter] I’m sorry, I interrupted you while you were answering something earlier. I’m so sorry.

 

NIC : ...Umm, I do enjoy cliffhangers, I’m sorry. It’s like I thrive off of reader tears. I’m sorry.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

NIC : It’s like the biggest cliffhanger is it’ll be four months before I update. Muahahaha.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Do the cliffhangers, do they help you to stay moving forward like momentum wise. Like “well, I left them hangin’ and I can’t leave them hangin’ too long’.

 

NIC : It does help because, like, I’ve had those moments where I’m like “People are gonna be mad. People are gonna be mad. People are gonna be mad for a long time.”.

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter]

 

NIC : So, it does push me to write the next chapter, but also I don’t know, I feel like something, like every chapter should be interesting and have like every feeling. If that feeling is the soul crushing regret of having read that chapter as soon as it came out, then you got what you wanted.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] But it’s a feeling nonetheless.

 

NIC : Yeah.

 

DARKWICCAN : Forgive me, I have to circle back around to the marriage thing, the arranged marriage thing. So, in one of the chapters near to where you left off, Wynonna comments on their father trying to marry her off. Marry Wynonna off.

 

NIC : Mhmm.

 

DARKWICCAN : But it is in fact Waverly who is about to be married for political gain. Why? What happened there?

 

NIC : Well, I mean, it’s ya know, back in medieval times, women were just used as plots so it’s not just that Waverly is the only one, but Wynonna, there was also my other intention for Wynonna to get married off as well to someone else, ya know, but Wynonna’s like “I’m Queen so…”. But umm...

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Dodged that bullet.

 

NIC : ...yeah. So, I’m, I don’t really wanna give away too many spoilers cause it’s kind of what the next chapter is gonna be dealing with, but it will be addressed, ya know. Probably.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : Probably. [laughter] Well, when we bring you back on again in a few months.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : In a follow-up episode, be like “so, what happened there?” Umm.

 

NIC : [laughter] Yeah, I make no promises. No, it’s really getting addressed in the next chapter.

 

DARKWICCAN : Ok. I’m excited for the next chapter.

 

DELAYNE : Yes, super excited.

 

DARKWICCAN : You have this wonderful capacity with writing, Nic, where you, when we’re reading what you’ve written, it really just sorta, we get super drawn in and super involved, so when we get to the end of a chapter and it’s the end so far, it’s just like “Gah, what? No, get in there. We have to know what happens next! Darn you HaughtBreaker Nic. Darn you.”

 

NIC : Tune in. Well, thank you. I’m glad that I can instill that soul crushing regret and fear.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] It’s, ya know, it’s a skill set. It really is. So, I’d say yeah that’s something to be proud of.

 

NIC : It’s all thanks to Gordon Ramsey.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Gordon Ramsey and Heath Ledger movies apparently.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

NIC : Oh God. Ok, so. Ok, I don’t know if you’ve ever, do you watch _Orphan Black_?

 

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah.

 

NIC : Did you read like Cophine fanfiction?

 

DARKWICCAN : No.

 

NIC : Ok, so, the fic that I wrote was called Casanova, like Cosima. Sorry, it was _Cosanova_ , after the movie _Casanova._ I get them mixed up because they’re synonymous now.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter]

 

NIC : It has, like, my mission with that fic was to see how many penis euphemisms I could come up with.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Oh my God. And I take it this was not a G!P fic?

 

NIC : No, it was not. No, it’s just that umm, it’s like Delphine is set to marry Felix, and Felix and Cosima are brother and sister, so.

 

DARKWICCAN : Right.

 

NIC : It’s, it’s very strange, like there’s both [cuts out] but there’s both Colin and Felix. I don’t know how much you watch _Orphan Black_ , but…

 

DARKWICCAN : I watched the entire series. Soup to nuts.

 

NIC : Well, then you know who Colin is, but umm, I guess some of the phrases that I used were so heavenly inspired that like my friends, my writing friend got it put onto post-its and sent it to me for Christmas.

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter]

 

NIC : I was like “No.”

 

DARKWICCAN : So your writing, it sticks, is what you’re saying.

 

NIC : It does, yeah. It sticks.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : It literally sticks. You can take it and stick it on places.

 

NIC : But that fic started out reading like the Bible and ended up sounding like a regular fanfic, so.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Were there a lot of “beghasts” in the beginning, which I guess you’re dealing with clones that sort of makes sense right?

 

NIC : Yeah, umm, it was just “she held upon her heaving bosom”.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Ok, so _Song of Songs_ then really, is the book you were pulling from in the Bible.

 

NIC : Yeah, it’s Shakespearean shit.

 

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter]

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : Nice. So...

 

DELAYNE : I pulled up the fic and I’m looking at the scene where Waverly asks what Nicole would be if she hadn’t had been a knight, and Nicole’s answer “I don’t know, maybe a bootmaker.”.

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter]

 

NIC : Ok, that was inspired by Kat. Cause Kat use to work with leather.

 

DELAYNE : Exactly, that’s what I was asking.

 

DARKWICCAN : Dude, I tell you what, if Kat Barrell ever wanted to do a fundraiser for anything, all she’d have to do is make one pair of boots and put them up for auction. [laughter]

 

NIC : Or she could make little handbags.

 

DARKWICCAN : Right, yeah.

 

NIC : Some people would buy that.

 

DELAYNE : Right. I’d rather buy boots.

 

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, she’s got a surefire way to raise all the funds she needs with like one items. One leather tooled item.

 

NIC : Yeah, that’s crazy. Like, cause Earperpalooza was having, I think it was Earperpalooza that was having the auctions and I was like holy cow I would never be able to afford any of that, it’s at fifteen hundred dollars. I think it was for the meet and greets. I was like “ooh”.

 

DELAYNE : Yeah. I remember everyone being very upset, it very quickly got out of hand for most people’s budgets.

 

NIC : Yeah.

 

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, when it’s like “oh only the super wealthy fans get to take part in this”, that’s when it’s like not fun anymore.

 

NIC : Mhmm. Yeah, but it was, yeah. That got super expensive. I was like “ah, it’s cool. I’ve hung out with them. Whatever. I was in the same room as them.”

 

DELAYNE : I got to hang out with you at ClexaCon, so that made me happy.

 

NIC : Mhmm. Line buddies.

 

DARKWICCAN : But circling back around to the story, really quickly. If we could, I know, weird notion and everything. Uh, so you kind of give us an idea of the type of king that Wynonna and Waverly’s father was. But really, can you sort of, or give us a hint as just how much of a mess the kingdom was left in with his passing.

 

NIC : Well…

 

DARKWICCAN : It seemed like a lot of wars going on.

 

NIC : I don’t, it wasn’t really a lot of wars. It was kind of like umm, just the crusades ya know. They were out there pushing out as far as they could so, like deep in the center of the kingdom it was like they were just trying to push their bounds as far as they could go and that’s why they were out there fighting. Cause that’s how dumb shit was back then.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter] Conquering kingdoms was conquering. A campaign just to conquer.

 

NIC : Coast to coast.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] The land of Earp. For as far as the eye can see. You can see King Earp taking Wynonna by the shoulder, going, “as far as the sun touches”.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

NIC : [laughter] “What about that shadow part?” “That’s for Bobo.”

 

DARKWICCAN : Exactly.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : Well, Nic, you enjoy writing cliffhangers, we’ve established this. Umm, do you like it when other authors do that to you?

 

NIC : Umm, I hate it after I’ve read it, but I understand it, so I deal with it.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : So, I have to ask you then, so last time you were on, we asked you what your desert island fic was. But this time we’re gonna put you on the spot, and we’re gonna say...What fic out there, any fandom, was left on a cliffhanger and has just been dangling there for ages that you would pray the author would come back to?

 

NIC : Yes. Thank you so much for asking me this question. So, there is a story written by Jaybear1701 and our friend tatarrific, and it is called _Kindred Spirits_. It’s a Cophine ghost hunting fic and it’s at chapter, it’s at three chapters out of four.

 

DARKWICCAN : Ooh. And how long has it been just hanging out?

 

NIC : It’s been awhile.

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] A few months, a year?

 

NIC : Ok, it’s been almost two years.

 

DARKWICCAN : Ok. So…

 

NIC : July ninth of sixteen.

 

DARKWICCAN : Oh my goodness, so this is _Kindred Spirits_ by Jaybear1701 and...

 

NIC : Tatarrific. Like Tata-rrific.

 

DARKWICCAN : So, again we never, on this show pressure authors to, ya know, to get work done, but we’ll say that this is you casting your prayers up into the fanfic heavens that should the muse strike this pair, they will come back and finish this piece.

 

NIC : Exactly. Hallelujah, amen, praise the fic gods.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Ok, well, we will provide a link to this fic, _Kindred Spirits_ , by Jaybear1701 and tatarrific. And, so we can get even more people just as aggravated that it’s not completed. And hopefully that’ll create some vibrations in the fic-verse and it’ll cause something to happen. We’ll see. But again, no pressure. No pressure on anybody.

 

NIC : [staged whisper] Totally pressure.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter] Nic, you’re allowed to pressure Jay. That’s all between you.

 

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] You can personally pressure Jay, we’re not pressuring anybody.

 

DELAYNE : Exactly.

 

DARKWICCAN : Well, Nic, thank you. This has been a blast. I can’t stop laughing. Nic, thank you so much for coming back on the show to chat with us about your story.

 

NIC : Thank you for having me.

 

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, we’re looking forward to that next chapter, whatever happens next. I mean you left us, ooh. You left us in quite an intense moment, so

 

NIC : Just kidding, it’s going back to Wynonna the next chapter.

 

DELAYNE : [laughter]

 

DARKWICCAN : Oh, ooooh. You’re so evil but we love you.

 

DELAYNE : Like you’ve said before DW, the hurt is so good. You love to hurt us so good, don’t you?

 

NIC : Maybe I’m kidding, but maybe I’m not.

 

DARKWICCAN : Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?

 

NIC : Yep.

 

DARKWICCAN : Alright, that’s it for us guys, I guess. Thanks for tuning in, goodnight everybody.

 

[OUTRO MUSIC: Don’t Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Maddigan]

DARKWICCAN: And that'S all for this episode of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Thanks for tuning in.

Big Ol' thanks to Haughtbreaker aka Nic for coming back on the show to talk about their fic 'At Her Service'

Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro

Background music for the episode was:  A Proper Story, Moon-Touched and Knights of the Sea by Darren Korb and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

 

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast.

And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com.

And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

[END OF TRANSCRIPT]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast


	23. Trans-Formative Works

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week DarkWiccan and Delayne are joined by educator and trans-rights activist Elayne Wylie (Gender Justice League) as they discuss several trans-inclusive fics.
> 
> Then all three sit down with author Rae D Magdon to chat about her stories and efforts to provide representation within her writing.

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/trans-formative-works)

 

Read the Fics!:

[Little Heartbeat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7291648) and [Jump the Gun](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8714452) by actualtrashking

 

[Put Away Wet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8761105) and [Close](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12383643) by RaeDMagdon

 

 

 

Rae's Desert Island Fic: [Thin Frames](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4345533/1/Thin-Frames) by Patrica L. Givens (Law & Order:SVU Fandom)

 

You can find Rae's original fiction for sale at: [Smashwords!](https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/raedmagdon)

 

Transcript for the Deaf and HOH/hoh by FlyingFanatic!

 

EFA Episode 23 – Trans-Formative Works

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : And welcome everybody to another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my fabulous co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And this week we are feeling our authentic selves.

DELAYNE : Well said.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. This week we are extremely excited, for a couple of reasons. One, we’re tackling a subject that I don’t think gets enough attention. And two, we’re tackling it with a fantastic, and incredible educator, who lives up here near me in the Pacific North West area, and who I met a couple years ago doing a show here in Seattle, and I am so happy to have met her, she is an incredibly inspirational individual, I would love to welcome to the show Trans educator Elayne Wylie.

ELAYNE : Hello! Thanks for having me on the show today.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, we are so happy to have you on the show. Did I intro you okay, was that an okay intro?

ELAYNE : That was great.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome.

ELAYNE : Thank you. I sound really excited, I dunno, I don’t think I’ve ever been on a podcast before, so I just popped my podcast cherry.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, I for one am honored.

[laughter]

ELAYNE : Yay.

DARKWICCAN : So today folks, we are talking about pieces of fanfiction that discuss or focus on the topic of intersex, or transgender characters. And this is a topic that is very close to me because I’ve got quite a few amazing and wonderful trans friends, and so often when I’m reading certain works of fanfiction that claim to be trans friendly, I can immediately spot that they’re not. And I worry for my friends, because it’s not fair, y'know, it’s just, it reminds me of like growing up myself as a queer, y'know, kid, and not seeing positive representation of me, so it’s like well, now that we have a little bit of agency, we need to make sure that we include everybody who hasn’t seen themselves positively represented, and get them some good material.

DELAYNE : Well said.

ELAYNE : Yeah. Critically important.

DARKWICCAN : It is so fundamentally important, and I’m so grateful that we’re living in twenty gayteen, right now.

[laughter]

ELAYNE : Nice.

DARKWICCAN : Because at least within our community, the subject of inclusion has become, y'know, really focused on, and it’s so important, and so as we have the dialogue, and we’re spreading the dialogue, out beyond our communities, it’s hopefully starting to take a little more hold in the larger sense, slowly, but hopefully. I mean, we can’t –

ELAYNE : We’re getting there.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, we’re getting there, and y'know, it’s one of those things where we’re in Pride month right now, and Pride was started by a beautiful trans woman of color –

ELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - and we all seem to have forgotten that. Not all of us, but I mean – you know what I mean? Like we’re having to re-educate our own community on our own history, which is –

ELAYNE : Yeah, no, no, I think it’s really such an important place to talk about, because it’s contextual, and often times we think about, y'know, Pride, and like oh, marriage equality, and lots of rainbows, but Pride was started, really, it was launched by a trans woman throwing bricks at cops. And y'know that was the initial thing, and it was basically saying, “Enough is enough. We have suffered abuses at the hands of so many people, for so long, that we’re just done”. And so yeah, I mean, there’s lots of rainbows, and there’s lots of beer, and celebration, and dancing, but really we have to remember that was a sense of like, “We have to come together”.

And the very first Pride was an annual observance of that first brick being thrown, of that event, and it’s not like that was the first time that trans, and queer, and gay, and lesbian, and bisexual people had been attacked, this was simply kind of the last straw. It was the anniversary of the last straw, that’s why we do this in June.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely. And it’s so important that we continue to remind ourselves –

ELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - of why. Because we’ve had to fight, and work so hard, and for so long, to be able to have these Pride celebrations, and yeah, we cannot forget our history. And that starts with remembering our trans brothers and sisters, and making sure that we include everybody in this community, and that takes many, many different forms, and today the form that’s taking is talking about positive representation in fanfic.

ELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So when we sat down and picked these fics to focus on, the thing that I was looking for – okay, I’ll admit, I picked the fics. It was me, it was me. You don’t like the fics I picked, you can blame me. Send your angry tweets my way.

But what I was looking for, was I looking for situations where, y'know, I think where representing normal life, essentially, these are individuals who just want to live a normal life, in the case – and really kind of just boring, typical, day-to-day dealings of living that still have the element of, y'know, a trans character, and that character – be intersex or trans – y'know, dealing with identity, but not in a heavy-handed way, it’s just like, “Oh yeah, and that’s part of them. Moving on”. But that also means that those elements continue to come up to the surface, but then fade back in as the character, y'know, deals with them intermittently.

Yeah. So that’s really the – especially the case with the first two choices that I picked. And I should say I picked four fics, two fics each by the same author, so the first two fics are by actualtrashking, and are from the series ‘Girl on the Radio’, and the stories are ‘Little Heartbeat’, and the sequel to ‘Little Heartbeat’ called ‘Jump the Gun’. And this really is a domestic story.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : In the story, Nicole identifies as intersex, and that’s actually something I wanted to touch on a little bit, in that in the very chapter – well, okay. I guess I’m sort of burying the lede here a little bit. So the title should give away – the title should give something away here, and that is ‘Little Heartbeat’. Essentially, Nicole is intersex, and she is in a committed relationship with Waverly, and she accidently gets Waverly pregnant, and so that’s where the little heartbeat comes in. And so when they go to explain this, in the first chapter, to Waverly’s sisters – and Willa is a prominent character in the storyline, and she is not a bad person, I should emphasize, she is not the Willa we know from the show, she’s actually, she’s a little weird, but she’s not bad.

ELAYNE : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : But she goes – Waverly and Nicole go to explain the situation to Wynonna and Willa, and both Wynonna and Willa are a little confused, because as far as they know, Nicole is a woman. And she is a woman, she is a woman.

DELAYNE : Exactly.

DARKWICCAN : But she also has this condition that she identifies as Mosaic Klinefelter syndrome, in which case she says she’s XXY, she’s intersex. And oops, she got Waverly pregnant. So, Elayne, we talked about this a little before we started recording, as soon as I was reading, and I hit that explanation, I immediately Google; oh what’s Klinefelter syndrome. And in reading it I was like, oh, good, that’s really interesting. Unfortunately, that also should mean that her character is sterile, so later on as we’re reading through the series, it seems more that actualtrashking is putting Nicole more and more into a sort of trans identity, less intersex and more trans, which is fine, I mean, however she chooses to identify is her choice, and she is, ultimately, at the end of the day, she’s a woman, she’s Nicole.

ELAYNE : Right.

DARKWICCAN : So what are kind of your thoughts on how she initially chooses to explain the situation.

ELAYNE : It’s interesting, ‘cause yeah, when you get into talking about Klinefelter, I mean, we live in the Google age, so when you write something, you commit something to print, you’re basically creating for the rest of the story’s existence, the sense of like this is who this character is. And I had to parse out is the character saying “I’m Klinefelter”, and this is what’s going on, or is it the author explaining that to the reader. So, one way to kind of get over that brick in the fourth wall of, so to speak, of this is the character may have been misdiagnosed in the story. So the character says, “I’m Klinefelter, and this is why this is going on”. And, I mean, so I can get over that, but I think it’s possible that the author is trying to find a way for Waverly to see, “I’m with a partner who identifies female”, and maybe it’s kind of like a soft way to get into trans, so that it’s really saying, “Hey, I’m with a woman, that has this experience, this intersex experience”. It’s possible that the author was even just - kind of picked the wrong intersex condition. So to speak.

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha.

ELAYNE : Before putting the right thing. But I’m gonna go with the character thinks she’s Klinefelter, but obviously there might be something else going on.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, yeah. Yeah, that makes absolute sense, thank you for explaining that plot point. It becomes clearer, the further in that you read, that Nicole’s character was assigned male at birth, and then as she grew up she found herself more identifying as female, and ultimately changed her name from her birth name, to her name that she felt was her true name, and started living her life, y'know, as a woman, because she is one. Right. As you move deeper into the story, and then into the sequel, ‘Jump the Gun’, we have more experiences – or we go through more with Nicole - and she has a moment of dysphoria while she’s on patrol with a new deputy. That I was like, oh, okay, that’s really interesting, because you haven’t really seen her deal with that up to that point, so for me it was like, oh, that’s right, I had forgotten.

DELAYNE : Right? ‘Cause it’s just Nicole, and Nicole is a woman, so…

DARKWICCAN : She’s just Nicole, yeah.

ELAYNE : Which I think is actually, from a canon of trans characters, I think from the perspective, so often when we see trans characters the entirety of that particular characters arc, story arc, is them dealing with their trans-ness, and they don’t get to be really anything else but trans in that story.

So, to really start off, I mean you get quite a bit down into that first chapter before there’s any inclination of where Nicole says, “I’m the father”. And, y'know, not in the Darth Vader, “I am the father”. [laughter] But in the sense of like, “who’s the father?”, it’s like, “I am”. And it’s like this woman saying this, and then the doctor’s like, “Oh, okay” and then Waverly is the one that actually has the moment of, “Is that okay, did that just happen? Is everything okay?”

And to have Nicole just like, y'know, trans people who have – trans women who have children will often, not all the time, and it’s certainly not a universal thing, say, y'know, hey, I’m the parent, or I’m the father, I fathered the child. And I’m like, if you’re comfortable with it, then I’m gonna be comfortable with you being comfortable with it, so. But I just felt that it wasn’t a big deal.

DELAYNE : That’s the important part.

DARKWICCAN : I love when, at the beginning, essentially Nicole comes out to Wynonna and Willa and they’re just like, “Well, anyway, you’re still Nicole. Can we focus on the fact that my sister’s pregnant?” Y'know, like –

ELAYNE : Exactly.

DARKWICCAN : - you’re still Nicole, right, okay, fine, moving on. Waverly are you okay with this situation, was it consensual? And, y'know, Waverly’s like, “Yeah”, and it’s like, “Oh, okay, well fine”. So I really love the fact that it didn’t change Wynonna or Willa’s opinion or impression of Nicole at all, it’s just like, “Okay, that’s a thing now, moving on.”

ELAYNE : Yeah.

DELAYNE : One of my favorite lines is when Nicole’s mother said, “I knew I was having a girl, all of you, including, you, Nicole”.

ELAYNE : Yeah, that’s –

DELAYNE : I thought that was very sweet.

ELAYNE : Yeah, I mean, as a trans woman, I’m constantly reminded in the tiniest of ways that I didn’t have exactly the same experiences as a cisgender woman growing up. There were no dolls for me, at least in the open, y'know, dolls that I had were, y'know, hidden, hidden safely away so nobody would ever see. Y'know, the clothing, the hair being done, the makeup, all of those experiences just weren’t present, so I experienced a lot of those as an older teen, as young adult, those were my first experiences, so I think that’s fascinating to explore.

DARKWICCAN : So what are you – what do you look for when you’re reading trans literature, Elayne, what are you looking for in representation?

ELAYNE : You know, I’ve been reading trans fiction for years, I was trying to remember the name of site that I used to go to. There were two, one of them was called Nifty, n-i-f-t-y, and there’s a lot of trans fiction there, and it pre-dates - back in ’98, ’99. There are other y'know trans fiction sites, and, y'know, I would say that this kind of fiction, when you, instead of creating from scratch a story, and then placing a trans character in it, I’m so grateful that there are authors like these, that actually put, or insert, trans characters into these other incredible storylines. Because you know that, you know that _Wynonna Earp_ is, that whole story, that whole show, has been shopped so much, by so many different writers, that it’s so rich, and diverse, and then just to drop a trans character in there, that just makes it so worthwhile to read that. ‘Cause you get the _Wynonna Earp_ that we love, we get all that richness, and then you get a trans character which you can really identify with. I think that’s really powerful. I’m saying you, but I mean me. But, I mean, it could be you, too.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : You, our listeners.

DARKWICCAN : That fanfiction, when it’s done well, and it’s done right, and it’s done with good intention, y'know, speaks to all of us.

ELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : But when, yeah, these particular stories, these are – oh, gosh, I am so anxious for actualtrashking to update, next chapter of ‘Jump the Gun’, we’ve been waiting for a while now. But I never put pressure on anybody, I’m just saying that I, myself, am incredibly excited, because I love this series so much. I love the fact that they’re not afraid to explore the dramas that can happen in long term committed relationships. The mistakes that are made, and then the way that y'know they have to come back together to try make things work, and y'know that thing that was broken may never be fully repaired, or the scar of it is always gonna be there, but they make the choice to work together and keep moving forward. And that’s, y'know, there’s a lot fanfiction out there that’s just fluff, and that’s great, but y'know I also love digging into stuff that feels true and authentic.

ELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : And that’s what I really get from the ‘Girl on the Radio’ series, so, yeah. But moving onto our next couple of fics, by the author Rae D Magdon. These two stories are one-shots, they are – they’re what we call PWP, or porn without plot. But what I really liked about – [laughter] – what I really like about them is there more like little interludes, between the two characters, and Rae’s husband is a trans man, it’s something that she’s been very vocal about within the community, she’s fundraised to help him through his transition, and she is also very careful about how she writes these stories, and scenes, and whatnot. And it’s been interesting, actually, watching her evolve as a writer, where she started writing and she was little less, um, careful. A little less, y'know, woke. And as she kinda progressed she became more sensitive and more aware, and careful about her writing.

ELAYNE : Oh, that’s great.

DELAYNE : And also the willingness to provide these stories, it states in the notes, “I want to write these stories for you, that people want these stories, and I wanna do it justice”.

ELAYNE : That’s great.

DARKWICCAN : Right. And so the first story that I picked of hers is called ‘Put Away Wet’.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : And yes, it has an explicit rating.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Both of these are rated explicit. And the second one is ‘Close’. And the reason I picked these two is because ‘Put Away Wet’ is an earlier work where she’s starting to learn to be careful, and then ‘Close’ is probably, I think, probably her most evolved story. And also one thing I want to talk about a little bit is this line, that some authors are very aware of, and some authors blindly just phoom, go right across it. And that’s the difference between writing something that is for a trans readership, versus writing something that is a fetishization.

ELAYNE : Right. It is about trans folks, but it primarily for cis folks.

DARKWICCAN : Right.

ELAYNE : Yeah, got that.

DARKWICCAN : ‘Cause that’s something that I’m always kind of checking in with myself, y'know, when I’m reading, it’s like, why am reading this?

ELAYNE : Sure.

DARKWICCAN : Y'know, am I reading this for right reasons, or am I reading this for the wrong reasons. And – ‘cause I have to read everything, for the show, I literally read everything, Elayne.

ELAYNE : Yeah, I bet you do.

DARKWICCAN : That – that doesn’t mean –

DELAYNE : She is the best for doing that, I appreciate it so much. I hope you know that, DW.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I know. You’re welcome. That doesn’t mean that I enjoy everything that I read, and it doesn’t mean that I won’t nope out of something, y'know, relatively quickly, if it’s going down a direction that I’m like, this is not working.

ELAYNE : Yeah, seriously.

DARKWICCAN : Nope! Yeah. [laughter] So, yeah, so that’s something that, in reading works were y'know there’s a tag that says trans character, or there’s also – what I found is that if a work has the tag g!p –

ELAYNE : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : - which means girl penis, that’s generally gonna be more of fetish fic.

ELAYNE : Okay, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Not always, not always.

ELAYNE : Right/

DARKWICCAN : But, yeah, but usually, whereas if it’s tagged as trans, or intersex, or gender divergent, or gender diverse, that’s gonna be more, y'know, a more sensitive -

ELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - and I don’t want to use the word – I’m –

ELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - I don’t know what I’m saying –

ELAYNE : I’m picking up what you’re putting down. Y'know, if I can talk a little bit about ‘Close’, and this idea of – when I read it, my first reading of it, I really felt like it was the former, and not the latter, I really felt like it was somebody who really understood that sex isn’t perfect, and always sexy. Sometimes sex is like, I completely inside my head, and is everything okay, and oh, what’s going on, and oh, did I just say that? Oh, that’s terrible, I didn’t mean that, can we stop, and are you okay? And, y'know, do you need more lube? And, y'know, sex is sticky and awkward, and sometimes, and what I loved was this idea that there wasn’t any porn music going on in my head while I was reading this, is was just I was literally inside this extremely tender moment between people. It was very private, and very sincere, and that’s what I got, I mean, there was – sometimes writers can really just take me right out of a story by just, y'know, talking extensively about, y'know, there’s a lot of descriptive words, and it’s just funky. And this was just poignant, and touching, and it really kept me inside the story, and I wanted to know how this was progressing, but in a curious way, like I was really, I cared about the feelings of these people, instead of just being like oooh, sexual. Y'know, I’m reading with one hand, so to speak, hah hah. [others laugh] Like I’m scrolling with one hand, on, y'know, what am I doing with my other hand, whoo. [Delayne laughs] Y'know, so, exactly.

DARKWICCAN : Taking notes.

ELAYNE : That’s what I’m doing, I’m taking notes, y'know, doing my taxes with my other hand, I dunno. [others laugh] So, I was thinking about Alanis Morissette, just like, “I got one hand – “

DELAYNE : That is the – a new euphemism that we will start: “I’m doing my taxes”.

[laughter]

ELAYNE : So – but I just really appreciated that about the story, and, yeah, I just felt – and it’s funny, ‘cause I read ‘Little Heartbeat’ first, and then I was like, oh, ‘Close’ is kind of like the prequel to this. ‘Cause it was – and then ‘Put Away Wet’ was like, oh, there’s actually sex going on, and there was emotion, and there are real things going on, like the exchange in ‘Little Heartbeat’ between Nicole and Wynonna, and it was like, y'know, was there consent? And it was like, yeah, there was. And – not like they were trying to have a kid, but it was definitely consensual, and it was like, we’re accepting these circumstances. And then I felt like I’ve read about that, ‘cause I had that question: where did that come from? And then I felt like I read about that in ‘Close’ and ‘Put Away Wet’, so I don’t know if there was any collaboration between these authors, but – maybe there was.

DARKWICCAN : Well, we can actually ask Rae, I invited Rae to come on the show to chat with us today, so we actually ask her about –

ELAYNE : Awesome.

DARKWICCAN : - that, in the second segment today.

DELAYNE : I do know that, yeah, actualtrashking – there is a first, there’s one before ‘ Little Heartbeat’, a one-shot. And that’s actually on top of a cop car.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : Is where that happens. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yes, it was – yeah – so you know, if you read the whole series, and you start off with the very first story, which is just a one-shot, budum-ting – [laughter] – then you know how they end up in the situation they’re in, at the top of ‘Little Heartbeat’. So I don’t know that Rae and actualtrashking really communicated.

ELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : We could ask, we could ask, though. You never know, stranger things. But yeah, I love ‘Close’, I honestly think that of Rae’s, y'know, works that she’s written specifically to embrace trans audience –

ELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - it’s her best one, because it is so touching, and it’s so sweet, and, yeah, like you, you aren’t hearing, y'know, jazz base in the background, it is just this very sweet connection between these two people who love each other so much, and are checking in. It’s just really, really lovely. Whereas ‘Put Away Wet’ – oh, sorry, I was gonna say, whereas ‘Put Away Wet’ is a little bit more fun, they’re still having a very serious conversation, but it’s a conversation that they are comfortable having with each other, and using, y'know, checking in with each other, is this language okay, yes, I’m okay with it tonight, thanks for asking, and things like that. And it’s also deliciously dirty.

[laughter]

ELAYNE : Oh, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

ELAYNE : I will tell you, ‘Close’, of these four, I think ‘Close’ is my favorite as well, the person that got me into Wynonna is the person that taught me the terms ‘slash’ and ‘shipping’ and y'know, fandom. I mean, I love all those things now, and they were like, as I told you earlier, offline, that the reason they were like, “Don’t talk to me until you’ve watched _Wynonna Earp_ ”. I’m like fine, okay. So –

DELAYNE : And now you can say you’re experienced with reading _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction, too, so, I mean, you’re in it, now.

ELAYNE : When the teacher becomes the master. [laughter] Er, the student becomes the master, you get that. So, yeah, so this was great, this is good stuff.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome. Well, I think that we’ve built up enough momentum that we should go ahead and dive into our next segment with Rae, RaeDMagdon, who –

ELAYNE : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : - is the author of, as we saying, the works ‘Close’ and ‘Put Away Wet’. But before we do that, we have to introduce this week’s [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Risk of Rain by Chris Christodoulou

DARKWICCAN : And welcome back to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, Darkwiccan, and with me is my co-host –

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And joining us today in segment two, as well, is the fantastic and wonderful trans educator, Elayne Wylie.

ELAYNE : Hello!

DARKWICCAN : And joining us today to talk about her incredible works, ‘Close’ and ‘Put Away Wet’, is the author RaeDMagdon. Rae, welcome to the show.

RAE : Thank you so much, I’m really excited to be here.

DARKWICCAN : We’re excited to have you. You are one of my favorite fic authors, and also I really, I’ve actually started reading your published works, and I’ve really been enjoying them, so it’s a pleasure to have you on.

RAE : I’m so flattered, thank you so much. Which one are you reading? I’m just curious.

DELAYNE : ‘Lucky –‘ I just finished ‘Lucky Seven’, but actually I started re-reading it. [laughter]

RAE : That was the one I was gonna recommend, and it actually has a trans character. She’s one of the main supporting cast characters, so.

DARKWICCAN : That’s – oh yes, that’s right. Sorry, I am reading so much right now, that everything is sort of mushing into one giant fic.

RAE : One giant story? Are you one of those people who has like a stack of thirty books by their bed?

DARKWICCAN : Yes, I am! That’s exactly –

RAE : Are you that person?.

DARKWICCAN : I am that person.

RAE : In that case, you are forgiven.

DARKWICCAN : Thank you.

RAE : Because we are similar, so.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter] I was like, oh god, I’m about to give the wrong title. [laughter] What am I reading right now? I don’t know, I’m reading everything.

RAE : Well, I’ll tell you a secret: the worst part of writing, for me, is actually coming up with a title. And that holds true for original fiction, and fanfiction. It’s just, I hate it.

DELAYNE : [laughter] That’s why I have DW do it for me.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I actually take great amount of pride in ability to title things, and name characters. So you ever find yourself on the spot, I will not charge you a fee, you just shoot out like, “Hey, I need a title, here’s the general premise, okay?” and you’ll get like twenty suggestions back in five minutes.

RAE : Well, I like ‘Lucky Seven’ because I have a like a naming sequence now, I can do the whole _Oceans_ thing, _Ocean’s 11, Ocean’s 12_ … [laughter] eventually just jump back, _Ocean’s Eight_. ‘Lucky Seven’, ‘Lucky Eight’, ‘Lucky Nine’, ‘Lucky Two Point Five’. So I have a general – [laughter] – I have an idea for the next several books in this series, that I don’t have to be creative.

ELAYNE : That’s brilliant.

RAE : With the title – I don’t have to be creative with the title.

DELAYNE : You get to put that creativity elsewhere.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Excellent life hack there, good job. So, how did you get into writing fanfiction in general?

RAE : Well, I started fanfiction seriously in about 2008, 2009. And I started with _Law & Order SVU_ because I had been snooping around online, and found some stories about Alex Cabot and Olivia Benson from that show. I don’t watch it anymore, because the hey-day of that show is over, in my opinion, but I really loved the characters, and I wanted more, and I wanted to see them be gay –

DELAYNE : Together?

RAE : - together. So, yeah, so I started writing fanfiction, and I was surprised by the response. I discovered very quickly that it was very nice, not just after a story was written, but in the middle of a story, to have people leave comments, and be like, “I want the next chapter, I love this part”.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so yeah, there is something just really, really satisfying about having comments on a multi-chapter work that you’re posting, and it just sort of keeps you going, it keeps the momentum going, it’s really nice.

RAE : It’s an amazing motivational tool, that’s why I always recommend, like, even if you’re confident in your writing skills, you should be posting your fanfiction. Don’t polish it, and wait ‘til it’s perfect, you can always fix it later if you want to, or you can y'know move onto your next project, but if you post, you start a relationship with your readers, and that can be so fruitful. It’s definitely going to keep you writing, and the more writing you do, the better you’ll get, so.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, oh, yeah, a thousand percent. And what drew you to the _Wynonna Earp_  fandom?

RAE : The gay. [laughter] I mean –

DARKWICCAN : Yep, yep.

RAE : - no-one can resist a lesbian in a Stetson, I mean how was I supposed to not watch that show?

ELAYNE : This is true, this is actually the truth.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : No denials here, not at all.

DELAYNE : Yep, yep, came – what was it you said, DW? “Came for the gays…”

DARKWICCAN : Oh, came for the gay, stayed for the cray.

[laughter]

RAE : Yes. And I mean, the writing is also very good. I really enjoy _Wynonna Earp_ as a show because it is dark enough to fuel character development and an interesting plot, without being grimdark to the point where it’s nihilistic, and you don’t wanna watch any more.

DARKWICCAN : Right, yeah, yeah, it’s not like _The Walking Dead_ where it just got to the point where like, I can’t watch this for my mental health, like.

RAE : Emily tortures her children, but not too much, to the point where you’re like, why?

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Right, right. It’s like a – dare I say it – it’s almost a dom/sub relationship that we have with Emily.

[laughter]

RAE : A little bit, no but, I think that’s one reason that I like the show, is because it really walks that line. I’m watching it and I’m not afraid that something completely off-putting, or horrible, is gonna happen, but something horrible in a good way is gonna happen. I’m like, oh no, what’s gonna go wrong next? So it’s – I feel safe, while at the same time being excited. And I think that’s really hard to do in a show. And _Wynonna Earp_ does that.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, no absolutely, completely agree with you there, it’s really unusual, I think, to watch a genre show and feel – and not worry about the safety of your characters.

RAE : Yeah, I mean, of course the fact that they are Sapphic puts a really big, y'know, chip on –

DARKWICCAN : Target?

RAE : Yeah, target. I was gonna say chip on the viewer’s shoulder, but target on the character is more accurate.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : Which puts the viewers on edge.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So it’s just, there’s that comfort level of knowing that that’s a line that Emily has said quite vocally, and quite often, that she won’t cross. It doesn’t mean she’s not going to put them through drama, it doesn’t mean that she’s not gonna put them through angst, but she’s definitely not going to kill them, which is just a “Phew!”.

[laughter]

ELAYNE : Right.

RAE : You know that you’ll come away from the angst feeling satisfied.

DARKWICCAN : Right, exactly, exactly, yeah, yeah. So, speaking of satisfaction…

[laughter]

RAE : Nice Segway. Nice transition.

DARKWICCAN : Thank you. SO, speaking of process, what has been your process in approaching writing trans characters?

RAE : My process in writing trans characters I would say is evolving. I started out just writing on my own, just writing what I wanted to write, and I talked earlier about how my community of readers has really motivated me, and shaped my writing for the better. And I think that’s kind of where the case – I think that’s kind of the case here.

I have a lot of trans women who are readers of mine, and a lot of trans men also, and gnc – gender non-conforming – or non-binary folks who follow my fiction. And some of them have different wants and needs, and actually balancing those different wants and needs has been I challenge I’ve faced as a writer, because everyone has different comfort levels in trans community, they all have different terms they want to be referred to with, they all have different names for body parts, they all have different, like – transition is kind of a buffet, and I know this because my husband is trans.

I identify as queer, or bisexual. I’m almost exclusively attracted to women, but my partner of ten years transitioned, and I decided to stay married to him, and so he’s a trans man who is on hormones, and has had chest surgery, and what a lot of cis people don’t realize is that transition is kind of like a buffet, going back to my metaphor, where you pick and choose what you feel most comfortable doing in order to facilitate your transition. Some people transition socially, but don’t get surgery, some people get all the surgeries they can afford, some people can’t afford surgery, some people don’t have access to hormones. They are different hormones you can take. Some people stick very closely to the gender binary of the gender they identify with, some people are more genderfluid, in their presentation and their identity.

So it’s like a smorgasbord out there, every trans person is different, it’s really silly to assume that all trans people are alike, and so when you’re trying to write for such a diverse community, it can be a little tricky. Because what really one person finds accurate to their own experience, or empowering, can actually upset another person.

And the best way I found to deal with that is one, to ask for sensitivity readers, and comments from my trans followers. I do my best to be educated about the trans community, but at the end of the day, even though I’m married to trans person, I’m cis, I don’t know everything, and so to base my writing somewhat on the experiences of a willing reader who wants to see this story born into the world has been a huge part of my process. And I wouldn’t be able to do the work I do without the sensitivity readers, and the fans who leave comments about my work concerning trans characters.

And it’s had an impact. Like at first, before I worked with some sensitivity readers on fanfiction and original fiction, I didn’t know, because I’m with a trans man and not a trans woman, I didn’t know that some people are very triggered by certain words for their genitals.

And the reason I’m so sex-focused is no because trans people are inherently sexual in their identities, but just ‘cause like, I write smut. That’s all I write. [laughter] Like, I also write, in my books for sale, I write plot, and I write like sci-fi, and fantasy, and mysteries, but in terms of fanfiction a good percentage of what I write is smut, so. Don’t take this the wrong way, that like trans people’s identities are always sexual, or should be sexualized. But like, I’m going to be talking about it from a sexual standpoint, because that’s what I write.

DARKWICCAN : Right, yeah.

RAE : Yeah. I just wanted to clarify, but it’s important to be careful about the language you use. Like, word like cock could make someone really uncomfortable, and there are places where you could use that word, because I have lots of non-binary and gender non –conforming followers who are assigned female at birth, and one, they have dysphoria the opposite way. And so they want those kind of words to be used, and some, but not all, of trans women are not comfortable with those words, and so, y'know, it’s really – there are small differences that are very impactful to the reader that you can make. Like, instead of “she touched her cock”, like, you can be like, “she took her in hand”, and then it’s like, less likely to induce dysphoria for some trans women, if they are reading it phrased like that.

From – and this is what I’ve discovered talking to trans women who read my work, so I’m not just – hopefully I’m not talking out of my ass.

And the other thing I do is when I’m writing a trans character, or any character in fanfiction, I try to stick really closely to the source material. And by that I don’t mean that I’m afraid to break canon when it is beneficial to me as a writer, but I distill every character I write about, like Nicole, down to core character traits. Like Nicole is a protector, and that’s not gonna change, no matter what her gender identity is, or her gender presentation. Nicole is – I wouldn’t say she’s stubborn in a rude way, but she’s stubborn like when she sets her mind to something, she goes for it, definitely. I mean she walks in, very first appearance on screen, and is like immediately hitting on Waverly, because she know what she wants, and she’s going for it. So she’s very driven, she’s very smart, she can be a little flustered around pretty girls, but she also has her suave moments. And like Nicole as a person is not gonna change –

DARKWICCAN : Right.

RAE : - because her gender identity changes. It might change some things, it might change the lens through which you view her core character traits, but they’re not gonna change.

DARKWICCAN : Right.

RAE : So that’s important, is to just make your trans characters people. And it sounds really simple, saying it out loud like that, like it sounds stupidly simple, but – less in fanfiction, ‘cause fanfiction is all about making the characters people.

DARKWICCAN : Right.

RAE : There’s no medium that does that more. But in terms of like T.V. shows and stuff, lots of times characters are just plot devices, or shock factor, or, y'know, they’re put on screen to serve a different purpose, other than to be people that the audience has feelings about. And that’s especially true with trans and other queer characters, they’re just – they’re not put on screen to be people that we’re following the storyline of, and the emotions of, and the experience of, they’re put on screen to like, make us laugh – not in good way – or to shock us, or to, y'know, titillate us and – you have to make your characters people.

ELAYNE : I came here to say all of that, and I’m so excited to hear another person say it as well, ‘cause oftentimes I feel like I’m the one saying that, I’m like the designated trans person teaching authors and, y'know, in most cases, script writers, how to not suck at writing trans characters.

And I’ve met somebody who gets it, who y'know could write their own like treatise on it, and it’s really important that when we’re writing trans characters, yes, I mean, I think about like Laverne Cox’s character on _Orange is the New Black_ , how important it is to see a black trans woman in a role, but here she is, she’s incarcerated. And how much agency does she have in her life? What do her storylines revolve around? I mean, every other black woman on that show has incredible storylines that revolve around all kinds of things, but not their sexuality, but Laverne Cox’s stories are almost exclusively about her transness. And so, that’s exciting that she gets screen time, and we still have a long way to go. We have a long way to go.

So, y'know, it’s heartening to see, y'know, I think the Nicole that I’m reading in this is real, there’s a realness about her that doesn’t feel off-putting when I’m reading about the sex, ‘cause yeah, y'know, Nicole’s probably – there’s a whole, I think a segment on that – like, “oh, can we talk about that?” And Nicole’s like “Yeah, I’m cool”. It’s like “How did this go?” “Oh, sorry, y'know, we’re fine, let’s move on, let’s keep doing this.”

RAE : Well that’s kind of personal experience. You’re talking about ‘Put Away Wet’, aren’t you? Yeah, where they stop, and Waverly asks, “Is this okay?”

ELAYNE : Yeah.

RAE : And for a moment Nicole isn’t okay. I mean, having a trans partner myself, it’s something I’ve experienced as this partner of a trans person, and so it seems only natural to draw from my own experiences, and put it in fiction.

ELAYNE : Yeah.

RAE : And like I really care deeply, I’m glad, I’m so glad that you and I are on the same page, this is awesome, I made a new friend.

ELAYNE : Yay.

RAE : But I know I’m talking about, in ‘Lucky Seven’ I keep going back to my original work, one of the main supporting cast members is trans, and her transness is – I don’t want to say it’s unimportant, because it’s absolutely important to her character, but it’s also kind of an aside?

ELAYNE : Yeah.

RAE : Like she happens to be trans, and the main character finds out about it like, several chapters after they already meet. And she then goes on to more about finding her partner, who is missing, and blowing stuff up, because she’s the explosives expert on the team. [laughter] So, like, she cares about like, hard drinking, hard swearing, blowing stuff up, finding her spouse, who is missing, and then saving her friends. And it’s not really about her being trans, and I think that’s something we need more of, is more stories about trans characters as fully formed, three-dimensional people.

ELAYNE : Yeah, I mean, women, female characters of all kinds experience storylines that deal with, y'know misogyny, and just, y'know, toxic masculinity. People of color constantly –

RAE : OH, god.

ELAYNE : - constantly dealing with storylines that deal with the so-called casual racism, so to speak, y'know. Just like the millions of microagressions. So how phenomenal, how marvelous would it be if a black trans woman got to experience a storyline where she’s dealing with those things, and not her transness. Her transness was simply, as you said, incidental to the storyline. Just didn’t matter, it just doesn’t matter.

RAE : Yeah, incidental doesn’t mean not important, but it’s so powerful to see a character – and this is true of like lesbian and bisexual characters too, and just all marginalized communities, all of them. And like to see disabled characters have a storyline would be great too, without it being about their disability, necessarily.

So I, y'know, that’s what I – I try to do that in my fiction, in my longer form fiction, so it’s important, it’s so important, and I wish more people up in the upper echelons of the T.V. and movie industries would know that. I wish they would realize. Maybe someday. That’s why we’re coming up, to make our own stuff.

DARKWICCAN : That’s right, that’s right.

ELAYNE : Yeah, I mean we can rail against the Emmys, and the Oscars, about who those storylines are, but, y'know, ultimately it’s writers, and producers. It’s the producers and the people with money saying this is stories that we want. And the writers writing spec scripts, y'know, we could be pumping so many trans characters into so many different T.V. shows, and movies, and books. And then actually have trans actors portray those roles, instead of cis people, that are all hell-bent on an Oscar. What would that look like?

RAE : Oh, good lord, yes.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, man. It truly would.

RAE : Oh, no, oh god. If you’re gonna write a trans character, you need to cast a trans actor, and if you don’t think that there’s a trans actor that looks how you wanna look, you’re wrong.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Yeah.

ELAYNE : Exactly.

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely.

ELAYNE : I mean cast me, for example. I act.

DELAYNE : Yeah, hey.

DARKWICCAN : I know, I acted with you.

ELAYNE : Good call.

DARKWICCAN : You acted well.

So Rae, how would you say you approached the story-writing differently between ‘Put Away Wet’, which is a slightly older work, and ‘Close’, which is a newer work?

RAE : Okay, that is definitely a great question. ‘Close’, I got a comment from a trans woman on my blog the basically said:

“I love your work, I’m not putting all of this on your shoulders, but it makes me really sad that every time someone writes about a trans woman, that they’re always the ones doing the penetrating. And, I mean, some of us are okay with doing penetration with our genitals, or with toys, but some of us aren’t. Or it depends on the day, some days we might be feeling it, and it’s okay, and some days we don’t want to do it. But we never see trans women being the receptive partner. We never see trans women being the receptive partner.”

And I thought about it, and I was like, y'know, I’m gonna write something. And so ‘Close’ was the result, where Waverly’s actually wearing a strap-on, and is the penetrating partner for Nicole, because people – and it’s very sad, because like lesbians, trans women are often misinterpreted as a porn genre. Their identity has been co-opted by a porn genre, and so it’s, I’m sure, frustrating for some trans women to see like, that as the only method of having sex that’s portrayed, when they are sexual, in porn, in any medium.

So I thought about it, and I’m like, yeah, I really want to be more diverse in the sex scenes I’m writing, so I, yeah. ‘Close’ was the result of that, and I think – I got a lot of appreciation for it from my trans women readers, and it made me feel really good, and I’d like to do it again. I might do a sequel to that one. This has kind of inspired me.

I’m working on ‘Dragonlove’ right now, which features Nicole’s identity is kind of vague, because it’s in a sci-fi universe that is different from our own. It’s a cross-over with ‘Dragonriders of Pern’, by Ann McCaffrey. So I’m working on ‘Dragonlove’ right now, but after that I could, I might go back to ‘Close’ and do an update, because I just, I think it’s something we don’t see enough, and it’s something that trans women have asked me for, so.

ELAYNE : I was particularly really happy to see ‘Close’, as a story. I’ve known some adult film producers, writers, stars, and the kind of actual porn that we’re seeing is very real in that way. And trans women, y'know, are largely have such a varied sexuality, like, not all trans women are lesbians. Not all trans women would see themselves as straight, or in a heterosexual relationship.

So, I mean, the PiV sex is going to be present, so, I mean, I think it’s great to be able to explore the what if of what would it look like if we had a story where that wasn’t even an element. And I just feel it’s very realistic for a lot of trans people, ‘cause, y'know, my wife and myself, that’s not a part of our relationship.

Y'know, lesbian sex looks so many different ways, I mean, come on. That’s also true for trans women, and to only write trans women as PiV, y'know, in their sexual relationships, is to almost take a misogynistic, or patriarchal view of how sex works. To ignore the beautiful sex that women can have with each other.

RAE : Yeah, and I mean, there are – this has been something I’ve struggled with, because some people find the P in V sex, they enjoy reading it a whole lot, and it means a lot to them, and some people find it alienating.

And so that’s why I like fanfiction, and the fanfiction platform Archive of Our Own specifically, because you can tag your work. Very detailed tags, and that way I think, if it wasn’t for Archive of Our Own, I wouldn’t be able to have the broad fan base that I do. Because I have trans women that are okay reading P in V sex, I have trans women who are not so okay with it, I have trans men who want to read about trans character, but they actually like the P in V sex, because it feels them feel less dysphoric. I have gender non-conforming, genderfluid followers, so like, trans people are all over the map in what they like to read, and so if you have this tagging system that’s so detailed, people can pick and choose their stories based on the tags, and know what would be the most appealing to them, what would make them feel the safest, and most heard by the author, and that’s why I really appreciate AO3’s tagging system, ‘cause it allows me to say specifically what is in each story.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, no, the tagging system on AO3 is really terrific, and the funny thing is, is that I don’t read tags personally, but – [laughter] – but I’ve talked about this on the show before, I don’t read tags because I don’t wanna be spoiled. I do pay attention to bold faced tags, however.

But I also refuse to recommend anything on the podcast Twitter Feed that I haven’t read beginning to end, or beginning to most recent chapter post. So what I usually do is I’ll read through, and then I will go back and check the tags. But of course by then I will have an idea of what’s going to be in the tags when I go back and look. But then, when I go to recommend something, I’ll be like, “Pay attention to this tag”. [laughter]

So it’s been really, really helpful, as far as being able to promote works and also just be aware of, y'know, what I’m in for when I into read, or afterward, after I’ve finished reading: “Oh, yeah, they did say that. Okay. Good.”

ELAYNE : I’m wondering if there’s any, if either of you, or anyone knows about – I remembered I know the name of it, it’s FictionMania. It was Nifty, it was the Story Archive, and then there was FictionMania, and a lot of those were like sexual in nature, there was a lot of sexually explicit fiction as a part of that, but there was also tons that was flagged as, or tagged as a just stories. So I’m just wondering if there was some thought, if you know if AO3 had actually gone through and looked at those, and said: “What does our community actually need?”

RAE : Well, I know that they looked at a bunch of different platforms when they did the study. I mean, it was a bunch of women coders who put together the platform, and they looked at a lot of the platforms that were currently available. I don’t know specifically if they looked at that one, but I know that they really wanted a place that was higher-functioning than fanfiction dot net, and Livejournal, which were the big ones at the time. Because people were getting scared off those sites, especially queer and marginalized authors like didn’t feel safe posting their work, ‘cause it could get deleted. LIvejournal changed hands, fanfiction cracked down because of internet censorship laws in the United Kingdom and Europe, so they got rid of all their explicit material randomly.

So, yeah, Archive of Our Own exists, is a really great platform that is non-profit, that has lawyers that defend the right of the people who want to post their fiction, and makes sure that we have a place, so. Good on AO3.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, because I would say that the majority of the works in _Wynonna Earp_ are G to T, and then I’d say maybe seventy-five percent of the works are G to T rated, and then above that is M, and then above that is E, making up the last.

RAE : Now that’s odd to me.

DELAYNE : See, I could tell you –

RAE : That’s odd, to me.

DELAYNE : I could tell you that when you search Wayhaught rated E, and complete, you get about three hundred.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s not a lot. Three hundred out of twenty-seven hundred.

RAE : And a lot of those are mine.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, a lot of it’s yours. So, I mean, it’s like the, it really is, that’s not – it used to be that was sort of the purpose of fanfiction, back in the day, it was sort of just a way to bring together two characters, y'know, with the bow-chicka-wow-wow soundtrack. [laughter] Essentially. But as –

RAE : With feelings.

DARKWICCAN : - with feelings, yes, and feelings too. But that’s evolved, the writing has evolved, and it’s become a lot more, y'know, over-arching, and a lot, you have people writing to all different levels, and all different ratings. But, so it’s not all about the porn anymore, which – [laughter]

RAE : Which is fine.

DARKWICCAN : Which is fine.

RAE : Which is good.

DARKWICCAN : It’s a good thing, yeah, yeah. Well, we are actually just about out of time here. This has been a great conversation.

RAE : Geez.

DARKWICCAN : Boy, we’ve really covered the gamut, all the way down to the beginning of AO3.

DELAYNE : I’m impressed, I’m so glad that you knew that information, Rae, that makes – that’s awesome, I appreciate that.

RAE : Well one of my best friends knows some of the people who are on the founding team. Not like as friends with them, but like knows who they are, and has seen them at conventions and conferences. She’s on the academic side of fandom. She did a whole bunch of research about which platforms people use. She did a whole paper on it. Which platforms people post and work on, and what kinds of work are posted there, and where fandom lives on the internet. There’s actually a Slate article about it that her and her advisor where mentioned in, so.

DARKWICCAN : Nice.

RAE : Yeah, it’s really cool. She does cool work. Brianna Dim.

DARKWICCAN : What was her name again?

RAE : Brianna Dim, soon to be Doctor Brianna Dim.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, very nice, nice. This almost sounds like a – Doctor Dim sounds like comic book hero. [laughter]

RAE : It does sound like a comic book, I’m gonna probably use that.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : But, okay, so, speaking of books, you have published works, and I’m wondering where our listeners can buy them?

RAE : I have eleven published works, not counting short stories, so I have quite the back catalogue. My works are purchasable on Amazon, on Barnes and Noble, on iBooks, on Kobo, on Smashwords, which is great independent retailer that will give the ebook basically in any format you want, and the authors get a bigger cut if you go to smash words dot com. So, yeah, just search Rae D Magdon on any of those websites, or go to raedmagdon dot com, which is my website, and all my books are there. And just for listener information, the two that have trans characters so far, I’m gonna hopefully do more, where ‘Lucky Seven’, which is my latest release, it’s a cyber punk futuristic adventure about a crew of queer misfits that are trying to save the world from an evil corporation. And Cherry Valdez is a trans woman, and there’s also a non-binary protagonist named Rami Habjar, and they’re in a relationship together, and they’re two of the main supporting characters. And one of the -

DELAYNE : And they’re adorable

RAE : - main characters – yes, they’re adorable – one of the main characters, Sasha Young, is gender non-conforming lesbian, a gender non-conforming black lesbian, and Elena Nevares is the other protagonist, and she’s a bisexual Latina hacker, so.

And then the other book I wrote was ‘Tengoku’, which was a finalist for the GCLS fantasy sci-fi category in 2017, which was exciting for me. I didn’t win, but it was an honor to be nominated. And Kaede Aozora is one of the main characters, and she’s a trans woman. And she had, obviously, her own story, she’s running away from her family, and trying to escape some horrible things that are happening in her kingdom, and she runs across Imari, who is the daughter of a lord, and they go on this magical quest to help Imari get a new hand, ‘cause she’s missing her hand. So it has little bit of disable rep as well, that I tried to care with. She gets a cool sword, instead, let me just say that, I’ll just say that.

DARKWICCAN : So we’ll sure to provide a link to your website so that folks can purchase those fantastic books of yours, and, additionally, I have one more question for you. I’m actually gonna ask Delayne to ask the question. It’s the question that we ask all of our authors, but before I pass the mike over to her, I have to say, Elayne, thank you so much for coming on the show today, and spending time with us in the first segment, and joining us again to speak with Rae. It’s been fantastic having you on.

ELAYNE : Thanks so much for having me, I really appreciate the conversations that we had, and an introduction to a new genre that I get to read. Yay!

DARKWICCAN : Yes! Yes. And a new Earper, yes.

RAE : I’d be happy to give you a free copy, and I definitely wanna start an email correspondence with you, because, like, now I’m having screenplay ideas, so.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, great, we’ll make sure you guys connect offline.

ELAYNE : Let’s do this, thanks.

DARKWICCAN : But before – yeah – [laughter] – before we let you go, Delayne, why don’t you ask Rae our final question?

DELAYNE : Alright, Rae, you are stranded on a desert island, and have only one fanfic to read. What is it?

RAE : OH, my god.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Any fandom.

RAE : Any fandom? Okay, that makes it easier. Okay. Only fanfic to read, okay, I’m gonna go really far back in time. I think ‘Thin Frames’. It’s from Alex/Olivia universe, it’s one of the first pieces of fanfiction I ever read. It reads like a thriller novel, it’s great.

DARKWICCAN : ‘Thin Frames’. Who’s it by?

RAE : DAxilla.

DARKWICCAN : DAzilla?

RAE : Okay, DA, capitalized, x-i-l-l-a.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, okay. So ‘Thin –‘

RAE : Oh, Patricia L Givens, she has a real name. Copyright 2008, by Patricia L Givens.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so ‘Thin Frames’ –

RAE : And it’s on fanfiction dot net, and it’s on a bunch of other archive sites as well, from that era.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, fantastic. So, ‘Thin Frames’ by Patricia L Givens.

RAE : That was a crappy question, and by that I mean I loved it.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well we will also provide a link to that story so that our readers – our readers – our listeners can check that out as well, and again, so Rae, Elayne, thank you so much for coming on, and everybody else, thank you for joining us today, and we’ll see you, or hear you, on the next episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction._

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for joining us. Immense thanks to Elayne Wylie, trans-educator and director of operations and development for Gender Justice League. Please visit Gender Justice League dot com to learn more. Thanks to Rae D Magdon for joining us to discuss her works and chat about writing inclusive content for the trans-community and beyond. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Light by Alec Holowka; Risk of Rain by Chris Christodoulou; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

            If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

            Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast


	24. Where You Go, I Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today on the podcast DarkWiccan and Laragh take a little side-trip to 'The Good Place' as they discuss Doctoruth's divine comedy 'The Sum Total of Living'! Then, they convince the good doctor to sit down and walk them through the 9-levels of heck.

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/where-you-go-i-go)

 

Read the Fic!:

[The Sum Total of Living](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13041252) by doctoruth

 

Episode Artwork by: [Chantal Zeegers](http://youareavision.tumblr.com/)

 

 

doctoruth's Desert Island Fic: [Hold Me Closer](http://socallmedaisy.tumblr.com/post/31694500252/fic-hold-me-closer-brittanysantana-nc-17) by socallmedaisy (Glee - Britanna)

 

Transcript for the Deaf and hoh by FlyingFanatic!

 

EFA Episode 24 - Where You Go, I Go

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host DarkWiccan and this week, standing for Delayne, is the wonderful and talented -

LARAGH : It’s Laragh, but stop complimenting me, I don’t like it.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : It’s Laragh! [laughter] Laragh, who is refusing to let me compliment her in her intro, that is so you, though, that’s such a Laragh thing.

LARAGH : Oh, my god, it really is. Yes, I am filling in for Delayne this week, because she is busy. Although I have to say, I think that maybe she’s not actually busy, and she just sat this on out to punk me. [laughter] Because I have no business offering commentary on Greek myths and philosophy, or whatever this – I don’t even know it is. Is it philosophy? I don’t know.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Well, it’s both, I think. I don’t know if you would call – it’s more of kind of a Christian mysticism, almost, really.

LARAGH : Okay, well, I don’t even know what that means, so.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] But yeah, it’s theology, philosophy, yeah, a little bit, there. And mythology. It’s a whole mush. But the good thing is that really, for the most part, this fic that we’re discussing, it uses elements of these things as set pieces, but it doesn’t really dive to deeply into –

LARAGH : No, it is brilliant to read, but it is also very fun and easy to read.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely. And I’m wondering if we should give away what we’re talking about. What do you think?

LARAGH : Oh, yeah, we should talk about the name of the fic, that would help people.

DARKWICCAN : That would be great, yeah. [laughter] So this week we are talking exclusively about ‘The Sum Total of Living’ by doctoruth, which is a _Wynonna Earp/Good Place_ mash up, with a nice dusting of Dante’s _Divine Comedy_ thrown in just for funsies. This story, oh my gosh. This story.

LARAGH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : It’s so brilliant. It is so brilliant. As you said, it’s easy and fun to read, but it’s also just, the depth of it is mind-blowing.

LARAGH : It’s – yeah. Like, I don’t feel like my words do it justice, so I don’t even know what to say, because it’s that good.

DARKWICCAN : Well, let’s start with kind of describing the premise a little bit.

LARAGH : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : So the premise of this story is that Nicole has died. As a result of the widow bite, unfortunately, neither Waverly nor Wynonna were able to save her in time, and she wakes up in the Good Place. Or is it? Dun, dun, dun! Anyone familiar with _Good Place_ television series knows the answer to that. But she wakes up in the Good Place, with good old Michael there to welcome here and get her settled. And slowly – or really not so slowly – Nicole starts to twig into the fact that maybe this isn’t the Good Place. Maybe this is the Bad Place, and if that’s the case, what the hell – pun intended – is she doing there?

LARAGH : Excellent summary.

DARKWICCAN : Meanwhile, back on Earth, in Purgatory – [laughter] – you gotta love that. Wynonna, and Waverly, and the rest of the gang that has survived the onslaught of Revenants at the end of season two, are dealing with Nicole’s passing. And so we have this juxtaposition of sort of punny comedy happening in the Good Place – and I got to tell you, one of the great features of _The_ _Good Place_ television series, for the first couple of seasons, is all of the food puns.

LARAGH : Yes, yes.

DARKWICCAN : And doctoruth does not let us down with food puns -

LARAGH : No, they’re very –

DARKWICCAN : - in her Good Place. I cracked up multiple times.

LARAGH : They’re so good.

DARKWICCAN : There are some really clever ones. So, but anyway, you’ve got the sort of high comedy of the Good Place happening, with an undercurrent of darkness, and badness, and then in the “real world” – you can’t see, but I’m making air quotes – you have this very, very dark, emotional story of mourning and loss, while also battling this larger battle of trying to defeat the curse, and ultimately trying to get back to Nicole. So, that is essentially the premise of the story, so it’s one of those things where, I don’t know about you, but – oh, oh, and the structure of the story is nuts, which I’ll get to in a second – but, Laragh, I don’t know about you, but when I was reading it, it was almost a relief every time we got back to the Good Place.

LARAGH : Yeah, I mean, as anyone who has watched _The Good Place_ will know, there’s a lot of levity, even in the dark moments. Which can be said for _Wynonna Earp_ as well, but, y'know, we’re dealing with Waverly and Wynonna dealing with Nicole dying in –

DARKWICCAN : And a couple other characters, too.

LARAGH : - and a couple of the other characters, as well. Y'know, they’re dealing with that extreme loss, whereas for Nicole and the others, y'know, it’s not a – without spoiling it, the length of time does not seem as long to them.

DARKWICCAN : Right, yeah, well, I mean, that’s something, again, taken from _The_ _Good Place_. There are memory re-sets, so Nicole isn’t really truly aware of how long she has been there.

LARAGH : Right. Well, she knows in some ways, because she’s Nicole, and she’s super cop, I think, is what Ruth calls her in the tags.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. Well, she’s just brilliant at deducting, brilliant at twigging into something that’s not right, and searching out the source, and figuring it out.

LARAGH : Yeah, which is, y'know, we would expect of her, really, given her job. So it was fun to see that applied to _The Good Place_ situation.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely, it’s like, you just couldn’t pull one over on her. You could distract her, for a little while. You know, I love the whole notion of Michael getting her a gaggle of puppies -

LARAGH : Yeah, yeah. [laughter] To mentor.

DARKWICCAN : - to keep her distracted from the fact that she was in the wrong place. And it worked for a few days, but ultimately –

LARAGH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - she went, “Wait a minute.”

LARAGH : I think at one point she figures it out in like seven seconds, or something.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, like literally, she’s sitting in front of Michael’s desk, and she’s like [gasp] “This is the Bad Place!”

LARAGH : “This is the Bad Place!”

DARKWICCAN : And he’s like, “Oh, my god, really?” [laughter]

LARAGH : Yeah, no, it’s fun, the story is great for each individual character you really go on a journey with all of them, y'know, it’s not -

DARKWICCAN : It’s also really – go ahead, I’m sorry.

LARAGH : No, go right ahead.

DARKWICCAN : I wasn’t – I – bleh – I was just going to say, it was really interesting to see how she approached essentially a re-write of the back few episodes of the second season without Nicole.

LARAGH : Yeah, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : And a couple other character, who we aren’t gonna give away just yet.

LARAGH : Yeah, especially because they have to deal with all of the drama that unfolds in the last few episodes of season two, but with the grief of Nicole dying.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, so that was just a really interesting take on how would this have played out if Nicole wasn’t around. So that was interesting, and I really loved how Wynonna was just completely, and totally, and fully committed to being there and supporting Waverly. Because Wynonna was devastated too, but, y'know, for Waverly –

LARAGH : She stepped up.

DARKWICCAN : She really did, she stepped up beautifully. And it was just really sad, but lovely, to see that interplay at work.

LARAGH : Yeah, and I really loved that moment, as well, when – I won’t say how – but when ultimately Nicole and Waverly and Wynonna are reunited, Michael – well, I’ve just spoiled it now, haven’t I? But anyway, Michael tries to torture them by saying that they’re both there with Nicole because Waverly loves them equally, and they love Waverly equally. And Nicole’s having none of that, she’s like, “We’re not fighting over this. No, that’s not happening. No.”

DARKWICCAN : “No, we’re not playing that game.”

LARAGH : “No, we’re not fighting over this.” I thought it was really nice, as well, because it kinda feels like sometimes we might do that in the fandom, as well, we’re saying, oh, the Earp sister relationship is the most important, and then for someone else the Wayhaught relationship is the most important, when really, y'know, there’s no need to fight over it. We’re all just supporting and watching the show, that’s what’s important.

DARKWICCAN : Exactly, exactly. I hadn’t even thought of the allegory at all, wow, wow. [laughter] Nice, nicely done, everyone. That is great. I hadn’t even thought of that. Wow, yeah, that’s so true. Another thing that doctoruth did is she – we have confirmed pronouns – she took Jeremy out of the _Wynonna Earp_ world –

LARAGH : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - and put him exclusively in the Good Place as, again, if you’re familiar with the television series _The Good Place_ , there’s a character called Janet, who is essentially an omniscient, immortal being, whose job is to serve as a stewardess for the Good Place.

LARAGH : She’s not a robot.

DARKWICCAN : If you need something, yep. Not a robot, no. And neither is Jeremy. But the thing that the Janets, and in this case, the Jeremys, have in common, is that they’re very innocent, and just only want absolutely the best for the souls that they’re serving.

LARAGH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Because they were created by the actual Good Place.

LARAGH : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So Jeremy is like the perfect – [laughter]

LARAGH : Yeah, he is, he’s perfect, it’s brilliant. I have it in my notes where I’m just like “Jeremy as Janet: stroke of genius”.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely.

LARAGH : It was, I think, yeah, for sure, that was like the best insertion – insertion sounds dirty – [DW laughs] it was the best – [laughter gets louder] – oh, god. It was the best way to utilize that character within the Good Place universe.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. [laughter] So, yeah, I agree. And Jeremy also had quite – every character in this had quite the arc to travel.

LARAGH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : And every arc was so clear and well-developed, and executed.

LARAGH : Yeah, there was no-one that was like, just there to be there. Y'know, as background.

DARKWICCAN : Right.

LARAGH : Everyone, even right down to the, like, characters that only feature for a second, have purpose.

LARAGH : Yeah, including baby Alice. She goes on quite a –

LARAGH : She goes on an arc as well, yeah, that’s what I was trying to say without spoiling it, but I think it’s plenty spoiled at this point.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, I don’t think it’s spoiling it, because we know that Alice is born at the end of season two, so if we’re talking –

LARAGH : This is true.

DARKWICCAN : - about the end of season two, that is an element that can’t be avoided.

LARAGH : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : But we’re not saying how she goes on a journey.

LARAGH : That’s true.

DARKWICCAN : Just that she does.

LARAGH : She does, she does go on a journey.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and it’s just really interesting how doctoruth weaves the two worlds of _The Good Place_ and _Wynonna Earp_ together, but again, as we touched on earlier, also brings in elements of Dante’s _Divine Comedy,_ and, possibly unintentionally, elements of other Greek myth like _Orpheus and Eurydice_. And it’s clear that she’s an academic, there’s no doubt about it –

LARAGH : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - and there’s just so much at play, so many things at play that she’s juggling in the air, and she never drops the ball once.

LARAGH : No. And in saying all that you said, as well, it is not at all difficult to read. Like I said at the beginning, I have no business being involved with anything Greek mythology. I was terrified when DW sent me this link, and told me I was going to have talk about it. I was so scared, I was like this is not gonna work, and it’s so easy to read, maybe I missed some elements by not understanding Dante, but I didn’t feel like did, I felt like I was there for the whole story.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, you don’t need to have done an academic study of the _Divine Comedy_ –

LARAGH : Definitely not.

DARKWICCAN : - or really Greek mythology at all, you don’t – yeah, not at all, but just knowing that those elements are at play. Really where the _Divine Comedy_ comes into play is in the structure –

LARAGH : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - of the story. Just really quickly: Dante’s _Divine Comedy_ is made up of three, what are called _cantica_ , that would be the _Inferno, Purgatorio_ , and _Paradiso_ , and each of the _cantica_ consist of thirty-three _canti_ . And, basically a _canto_ is a sort of a poem, and so you have this sort of three act structure is each _cantica_ , where there are three phases, essentially three chapters - breaking it down into more modern terminology – essentially three chapters in the _Inferno_ , three chapters in _Purgatorio_ , three chapters in _Paradiso_ , and that makes it up. So we have here with ‘The Sum Total of Living’ is we have, the storytelling is broken into parts of three. We have the _Inferno_ section, which is chapters one through three, we have the _Purgatorio_ section, which is chapters five, six – no, I can add – four, five, six –

LARAGH : Just about.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Hurr, I can count my number, I know – and then the _Paradiso_ section, which is seven, eight, and nine. And then there is a quick little epilogue to tie everything up at the very, very end. And that’s actually true for _Divine Comedy_ as well, it’s structured of nine plus one, the numerical pattern, so for a total of ten. So, nine circles of the _Inferno_ , and then the nine rings of Mount Purgatory, and then nine celestial bodies of _Paradiso_ , and then you have the _Empyrean_ , containing the essence of God, which is the plus one. So that is really – I know that sounds really heavy and deep, but it’s really not, because that is truly just – she’s just using that basic structure.

LARAGH : Yeah, I think it’s really important to emphasize that is not – you do not have to be academic to read it, at all. Because I notice that this fic does not have anywhere near the hits it deserves.

DARKWICCAN : No, more people should read this fic.

LARAGH : Yeah, I think that people are intimidated, maybe, when they see what it’s about, ‘cause I would have been, if I hadn’t been forced to read this, I would have skipped past it, thinking –

DARKWICCAN : I don’t know if I can read that.

LARAGH : Yeah, I would have thought that I won’t get it, so I would have just passed by it, and it’s brilliant, it’s a great just _Wynonna Earp_ story. Not even specifically – it’s a Wayhaught story as well.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, and please don’t be intimidated, I know I went off on a little bit of an academic ramble right then, just sort of explaining the _Divine Comedy_ , but that’s just so you can get with the structure on which this incredible work sits on. The work itself is very easy to read, and it’s a ton of fun, and it’s an emotional journey, yeah, it’s just, that’s it, it’s an emotional journey. But it’s so satisfying, it is so, so satisfying. It’s like a sumptuous meal.

LARAGH : And considering the structure that she talked about, that she used, where it’s the specific word count, and everything, there’s not one word that feels misplaced, there’s not one word that feels superfluous, there’s not one word that feels, y'know, out of place in any way. It’s just, it’s just, yeah. It’s tight, and perfect – and that sounded dirty, again, what’s wrong with me?

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : You just can’t help yourself with the euphemisms this morning, I guess.

LARAGH : It’s just structure so brilliantly, it’s a great, y'know, beginning, middle, end, or multiple middles, but you know what I mean, it’s got a perfect arc, there’s no filler, it’s just, yeah, it’s just a beauty to read.

DARKWICCAN : It’s absolutely fantastic, and I have got so many questions for doctoruth, I just have got to pick her brain about this.

LARAGH : Well, your questions are possibly more intelligent, but I definitely wanna know some stuff as well.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely, and luckily doctoruth has been kind enough to agree to sit down with us for the interview portion of our show today, so we’ll be getting to chat with her in segment two. But before we do that, we’ve got a couple of things we need to do here, house-keeping-wise.

[CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Sam’s Band (Pop Version) by Erik Barone

Olivia Joy Taylor is one of the newest fan artists to grace the Wynonna Earp Fandom.

Her sweet, adorable and often beautiful works showcase a delightful animated style and celebrate the joy that is everyone's OTP WayHaught.

While her works are not for sale, you can still enjoy them by visiting her gallery on Tumblr at olivia joy taylor dot tumblr dot com

Olivia Joy Taylor Art for Heart's Sake.

ADVERTISMENT ENDS

MUSIC : Bestest Detectives in the World by Kan R. Gao

DARKWICCAN : And welcome back to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me today is the lovely…

LARAGH : Hi, it’s Laragh.

DARKWICCAN : Hah, hah, got you to call yourself lovely, awesome.

LARAGH : Goddammit, every time.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Every time! And today, as I’m sure you have guessed by our primary segment, we are going to be talking to the amazing, and talented, and incredible brilliant author of ‘The Sum Total of Living’, doctoruth, who today – is it okay if we just call you Ruth?

RUTH : Yeah, please do, please.

DARKWICCAN : Well hi, Ruth, welcome to the show.

RUTH : Hi, thank you for having me.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, man, I am so excited to have you. When I first read this story, it was referred to me by The Gay Smurf, and when I first read this story I was just, my mind just kind of went [imitates explosion]. It is so, so incredible, and I was like I have to get this person on my show.

RUTH : Well thank you, that’s very kind. I like that you managed to actually make the noise of your brain exploding, that was brilliant.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, thank you. Yeah, I do vocal foley work just for fun, y'know.

LARAGH : She’s cool like that.

RUTH : You do like cool things, horses in the background of the podcast, sort of thing.

DARKWICCAN : No, unfortunately my abilities are pretty narrow, and just sort of explosions for the most part. [laughter] Oh, man. So I gotta ask you, how did you get into fanfiction?

RUTH : Yeah, so it’s gonna reveal my age, because I think I originally, the first bit of fanfiction that I ever read was probably from the famed days of _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ , and I think I was probably about thirteen at the kind of the cusp of the internet becoming a thing, and you know it just kind of blew my mind that the internet was happening, and stumbled across fanfic at that period when Willow and Tara were just entering the kind of, y'know, consciousness of little gay people everywhere.

So I just came across it, and the concept, y'know, of fanfic itself just obviously caught me, as I’m sure does a lot of people at that age, and older, but especially because I’d never encountered the concept before. And I think that I wrote my own little fanfic, that kind of re-wrote the gap between season two and season three of _Buffy_ , and then got distracted by being a teenager, and kind of being very emo for the rest of my teen years, and having all the kind of teen drama, and kind of forgot about that as a thing.

And then when Brittana fandom, is where I kind of came back in, about five or six years ago, and a lot of the people that I am very good friends with on Tumblr still are all from the Brittana fandom. And that’s really were I properly kind of jumped in the pool and, y'know, really became involved in fandom, and fandom writing.

And also because I was – sorry, this is going to be a really long answer to a very easy question –

DARKWICCAN : No, please continue, this is great.

RUTH : - when I was – at that time I was actually in academia, which I’m kind of not in any more, but really informs just everything that I do, still, and it was the kind of genre of fanfic which really caught my attention. And I started thinking about it as both an academic, and as somebody who really loves fictional writing, and y'know actually writing fiction as well. So I really kind of, yeah, jumped in, and then I don’t know if you both aware of how, or even were in the Brittana fandom, but it kind of, y'know, _Glee_ was just a nightmare of concept.

LARAGH : Yeah, I was there.

RUTH : Yeah, yeah.

LARAGH : I was there for that.

RUTH : So that just –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, we were there.

RUTH : - yeah, you could do the explosion sound, I think, at this point, just, y'know, succinctly described what that experience was like. And obviously the Brittana fandom was wonderful, and y'know, really intelligent and kind of not disastrous in the way that the canon was, or that a lot of the kind of fandom drama that happened outside of the Brittana fandom. But _Glee_ was obviously such a disappointing product that I did kind of step away from fanfic for a while after that, and the _Wynonna Earp_ came along and I think because I still had friends on Tumblr who were in the Brittana fandom who were also getting into _Wynonna Earp_ , and I think _Wynonna Earp_ is just one of those rare instances of a T.V. show that isn’t disappointing, so the fanfic doesn’t automatically come out of a sense of, y'know, friction between what we want to happen and what does happen. Which just means, I think, that it’s a much more joyful experience being, y'know, writing fanfic for _Wynonna Earp_ and it just, I just had that kind of, I didn’t kind of get back into the fandom thinking I definitely want to write fanfic, but it just kind of happened, basically.

DARKWICCAN : And boy are we grateful that it did, lemme tell you what.

RUTH : Thank you.

DARKWICCAN : I mean, holy moley. You just came out guns a-blazing –

RUTH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - no pun intended here, I mean, this work is just absolutely, utterly phenomenal.

RUTH : It’s really kind of you, it’s really lovely to hear that because you kind of, you don’t hear people say that in real life very often, and – in real life – but to hear somebody’s voice saying that is a really nice thing, I think, for fanfic writers, because you’re kind of always behind the computer, and y'know talking a lot to people online, but not always actually hearing somebody say, oh, I love your writing. I love the fic that you’ve written. So that’s really nice, thank you.

LARAGH : Yeah, no, it’s brilliant, it’s really, it’s a great piece. But I wanna know how it ever came to formulate in your mind. Like, what made you think, “I’m gonna put these three worlds together”?

RUTH : I think the – it was really a product, partly, of the fact that I was watching _Wynonna Earp_ at the same time that I was getting into _The Good Place_ , so I kind of had a bit of, y'know, watching them at the same time, obviously not on two T.V. screens at the same time but, y'know, over the same couple of weeks I was kind of watching both of them, and I think what really caught me, probably, to start with, was just the overlap in humor that really feels very consistent across the two, they both have a really similar kind of tone.

And then, I think, also the concept, y'know the parallels are quite obvious between the shows, and the concepts of heaven and hell, obviously, and also the play of Purgatory, which just delights me fundamentally, that part of _Wynonna Earp_.

Just made me start to think about it, and I think what happened was I just idly started thinking what would happen if a character was in Eleanor’s position in _The Good Place_ , exactly that same position, but it was a character of a completely different, y'know, motivation and quality. Not to say that she’s not high quality, I just mean, y'know, the kind of person that was in that position.

And it just took me straight to Nicole, and I just thought, y'know, what would Nicole do? And then I started to think, well, why would Nicole be in that situation, what could possibly have happened that would mean that Nicole was in the Good Place that’s actually the Bad Place?

And I think that there’s a kind of – that theme of _Wynonna Earp_ that’s also a theme of _The Good Place_ , to some extent, of kind of stoicism and self-sacrifice, and also the moral philosophy and the, y'know, how do you be a good person. And in _Wynonna Earp_ that’s – being a good person is most obviously about giving something up, and y'know sacrificing your own happiness for the bigger, greater good. So I kind of worked from that, and just thought, y'know, what would be really fun, to just put Nicole in the Good Place, and then I just started imaging it, and I kind of went on a very, very quick descent into “I have to write this, it would be like, such a wild ride”.

And I think it was probably the point where I kind of had the revelation that actually Jeremy is Janet, and there was just no, I was like, no other way that can unfurl. And I think it was just the thought of Jeremy as Janet that just meant I just couldn’t stop, I had to do it, I had to sit down and write it.

LARAGH : That was brilliant, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely brilliant, loved that, loved that so much. Yeah. Jeremy was so perfect, and so adorable, you just did such a great job with him.

RUTH : Thank you, he is so adorable. He is such an adorable person.

DARKWICCAN : But in addition to writing some very adorable characters, you do some pretty spectacular linguist and mathematical stunts in this work. I mean, exactly ten thousand words for chapters one through nine, the epilogue having exactly a thousand words, a palindrome at the exact center of the story. Was it the structure of the _Divine Comedy_ \- with its _canti_ , and it’s individual _cantica_ , all of that – was it the structure of the _Divine Comedy_ that sort inspired you to set these kind of tight requirements for yourself? And how difficult was it to accomplish that?

RUTH : That’s a really great question. The easy – the short answer is that the _Divine Comedy_ certainly inspired me to think really carefully about what I was doing, but really it’s just that I am obsessed with order and structure. That’s the easy answer.

And it was kind of, the _Divine Comedy_ and the kind of tri-part structure was the spark for it, in a way, but it was really born out of my love of narrative structure reflecting back upon itself, so the kind of idea that the form of it echoes the intent of it.

So when I sat down to think about the plot, I was just really interested in there being a really tightly delineated structure, and that being kind of informed and informing a really tight plot. So, really, I sat down and I just plotted out, very carefully, what is this story doing, what does it build up to, what stuff is happening in it.

And I wanted the really, really tight, uniform structure to be a bit like a careful parallel to that three part build-up, so the kind of the three parts, and that echo of the _Divine Comedy_ , the kind of, y'know, very loosely kind of hell/heaven, but, y'know, all those moving parts are actually different in this story, because hell is not what it seems, heaven is not what it seems, but that kind of three parts of y'know the first, second part, third part of the fic, which is each one is made up of three chapters, and they all go very particular places, and they are leading to that crossover, that kind of collision between _Wynonna Earp’s_ world, and _The Good Place_ world that happens coming from chapter seven, and chapter seven, eight, and nine.

So I think, yeah, and it is, I’m just, as I said, I’m just obsessed with kind of order, and I think the ten thousand words thing, it kind of came to me, and then I think it could be seen as kind of gimmicky, and I kind of thought about that for a while, and reflected on whether it would just be something which people would look at and go, y'know, that’s just a kind of gimmicky thing. But I think that there’s a lot of interest, to me, in that y'know, reflecting back upon itself, actually, the ten thousand words is for a particular function, and in this fic it was about, I’ve got a disciplined frame that I have to write within, and what does that mean for me actually writing it, that I’m keeping to this really careful, y'know, length.

And also, I wanted to get the pacing right, and I think that sometimes, and this is something that kind of became really apparent to me at the end, because when I wrote chapter nine, I still intended it to be nine parts, and then I spoke to Han about the last chapter, and said to her, y'know, does this land properly, because a lot happens in that last chapter, and we had a discussion about it, and realized that actually a lot happens at the end, and I did some work to kind of make the pacing right, but you sometimes need that just sheer number of words that you’re reading to allow kind of a really important plot point, I think, to land properly. And that was one of the benefits of the ten thousand words, but then at the end, obviously, I couldn’t be kind of contained by that, and I just made the decision to do an epilogue because it didn’t actually fit, y'know, the final kind of writing of the story, and how it was going to unfurl at the end.

Which is not to say that I like, feel like I gave up on the commitment to the ten thousand words, but more that I think that that length was really important, and actually it showed up at the final stage, y'know. It became really clear to me that actually sometimes when you’re writing something that’s really, y'know, you’ve been building up to in eight long chapters, it needs to be given the time to actually properly land with the reader, which of course is just one of the great things about doing fanfic, and having a beta, or even two betas, if you’re as lucky as I am, to have two people who will give you that kind of, y'know – sorry, I’m just getting really distracted by the fact that I just said, “If you’re as lucky as I am”, ‘cause that sounds really like I’m saying, “You may not all be as lucky as I am”, I’m so sorry, to all the people out like, there, like, oh my gosh, it’s so like –

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : No, not at all. No, you are very lucky, and we are constantly, on the podcast here, we are constantly hammering on the importance of having a beta.

LARAGH : Yup.

DARKWICCAN : There are still, y'know, there are quite a few authors out there who are incredibly good authors, and do generally very, very good work, but you know that it would be just that much better if they had a beta in their pocket. And so betas are superheroes of fanfic, for sure, for sure.

LARAGH : Definitely are, definitely. And I say that as DW is my beta, so.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and Laragh’s frequently my beta, and yeah, I’ve got a couple other betas that I’ve chatted with, and yeah, it’s just, I don’t know what I would do without them.

RUTH : No, it’s such a - I think when I first kind of entered fandom, and it was from kind of the background that was kind of much more related to academia and publishing, it was such a kind of revolutionary concept, of having a beta rather than an editor, because the difference between those two is so large, sometimes, y'know, it’s not something you see in other kind of walks of life, a beta. But it’s such a wonderful thing, it just, in so many ways, y'know, not just in terms of actually writing, and having that kind of technical and whatever else expertise, and friendship with somebody, but just having somebody with the enthusiasm, I think, is really, one of the really great things, that fact that you can have somebody else who’s really invested in your work as well.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, there’s definitely more of a sense of a collaboration than you would typically get with a standard editor, which I think is just really helpful, because fanfiction is an evolving art form, and because the source material is always ever-evolving, it’s always excellent to have that person who is there on the ride with you, to kind of help spitball, and figure stuff out, and yeah, absolutely. Betas are great, we love betas.

LARAGH : Betas are amazing. So, which world do you enjoy kind of playing in more, the _Wynonna Earp_ world, or _The Good Place_ world?

RUTH : Such a hard question. It’s like, such a hard question.

I think, ugh, Wynonna, frankly, herself, the character rather the place, is such a delight to write, but she’s also really hard, which kind of made the Wynonna in the world _Wynonna Earp_ quite difficult. I think that the key thing was, for me, was that the parts of the story that were set in Wynonna Earp’s world were kind of mechanically quite difficult, because the concept was basically that Wynonna Earp thought the universe of _Wynonna Earp_ remained exactly the same, and it was the twist was kind of the Good Place existing within that universe.

So it’s kind of like _The Good Place_ concept going into the concept of _Wynonna Earp_ . But that made quite difficult for me when I was writing the portions that were in the _Wynonna Earp_ universe only, because, I think because _Wynonna Earp_ is already such a kind of, y'know, such a grand concept show, and the storyline was not really about what was happening in that world.

It was a bit kind of, y'know, there’s this other thing that’s happening, and actually the storyline at the moment, until we get to kind of the last third of the fic, was really just Wynonna Earp’s word is continuing to exist without Nicole, and what are the ramifications of that, and okay, what would Wynonna do, what would Waverly do, if this is what’s happened, Nicole has died, and y'know then Doc has died, and Rosita has died, and y'know that’s the kind of sequence of events.

So it was really, really fun writing _Wynonna Earp_ , and I will say that probably my favorite thing to write was Waverly punching Champ in the face.

LARAGH : That was my favorite thing to read.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yes, that was great.

RUTH : I just felt so childish, but I just thought I have to write this, because I’ll never forgive myself if it’s not in there. So it was really fun writing the world of _Wynonna Earp_ , but it was harder because I think, also, you have in _The Good Place_ , you have that built-in conceit of the resetting of the memory, which, I mean, _The Good Place_ itself is a phenomenal show, to have taken that into a completely different dimension, y'know.

Didn’t just rest upon that – I kind of think at the beginning of season two, if it is the beginning of season two, where y'know Eleanor has actually found out what’s going on, and then there’s just one episode of the resetting of her memory, repeatedly. And you kind of think a lot of other shows would probably have made that the entire concept of the second season, but they y'know condensed that into one episode, and then went in a completely different directions, which I am now going off on a tangent about how much I love _The Good Place_ , but that –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, please do. I love _The Good Place_.

LARAGH : Yeah, love _The Good Place_.

RUTH : It’s brilliant, isn’t it? It’s just so – I think it’s so unexpected that, y'know, that after the twist at the end of the first season, that it would continue to just push into different directions the way that it has, I think there’s just not that kind of bravery, usually, in T.V. shows.

But anyway that conceit, in itself, of being able to reset Nicole’s memory and that being kind of the crux of the kind of the dramatic energy, really, in my fic, and that her – the collision between her as a detective continuing to figure it out, and then having her memory reset, and then all the things that I really enjoy, like you reset someone’s memory in a fictional piece of writing and they still react exactly the same way, because they’re so kind of –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

RUTH : - the integrity of who they are is so strong that, y'know, every time Michael clicks his fingers, Nicole says exactly the same thing.

So because of all those things it really was much easier to write the Good Place for the first half, because there was that – there was so much to kind of get through and explore, whereas in Wynonna Earp’s world it was kind of a lot trickier to get through that emotional journey for Waverly and Wynonna, of losing people, and kind of coming out the other side, and then actually the two worlds kind of colliding.

And my favorite part, honesty, is when Wynonna and Waverly show up in the Good Place/Bad Place, because that’s really, to me, that’s what – that is part of what I had been building to, that kind of Wynonna and Waverly showing up, and I think that is actually the first scene that I wrote of the entire fic, before going back and carefully plotting it, was Wynonna and Waverly showing up, and Nicole’s been there for god knows how long. So that was the best part but, yeah, I’ve answered your question by saying I enjoyed them both equally, in different ways. And I can’t choose, it’s like I can’t choose between my babies, they’re both – I’m sorry.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : We totally understand. I have to ask: was it a relief when you – as you said, you wrote the sequence where Waverly and Wynonna show up in the Good Place/Bad Place kind of first, and then built back up toward that – was it a relief when you got back to that?

RUTH : Yes, it really was, because I think I was quite aware that I needed them to be – I  needed Waverly and Nicole to be apart for, y'know, sixty thousand words, or whatever, and I kind of thought it’s all building to this, and I kind of am just waiting for them to be reunited, and to have that – just have that Wynonna, Waverly, and Nicole in the same place, ‘cause I just love the dynamic between them so much that I was just dying for that moment, and then I think it was not a struggle to write any of it, because it was just such a joy to write, but at the midpoint, chapters four and five, I was starting to find it really much harder, because that’s the kind of nitty-gritty middle section, and then I got to chapter seven, and it was kind of plain sailing, ‘cause it was just so much fun, what was happening with these characters at that point.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and you do such a specular job of blending these two series, while also including the element of Dante’s _Divine Comedy_ in there. And I know we chatted a bit at length about the structure – the influence of the structure of the _Divine Comedy_ influencing the structure of the story – but I also wonder what imagery from the _Divine Comedy_ do you feel you pulled from the most?

And did you pull from any other Greek myths? Because it seems like there’s an element of _Orpheus and Eurydice_ at play her, but that may just be an accident, or sort of a natural sensation, when you have two lovers who are trying to get to each other across an insurmountable situation. And one of them happens to be dead, so.

RUTH : Yeah, the literary critic in me wants to say, “Not accidental”, like but y'know, your interpretation, which I think is fantastic, and I think the – it was more of a kind of conceptually nod to the _Divine Comedy_ than really drawing specifically on imagery, beyond that kind of idea of a descent into Inferno, and then and ascent through the layers to Paradise. And I think that really informed the kind of, the structure, as I said, with the kind of the three parts.

But what I really liked about thinking about the _Divine Comedy_ next to what I was doing, was the fact that in ‘The Sum Total of Living’ it’s a bit like that journey, but twisted. It’s kind of, it’s ostensibly a straightforward hell to heaven journey, but it’s really not because there are so many moving parts, and deceptions, so Nicole starts off in what she thinks is heaven, but it’s actually hell disguised as heaven, and Wynonna and Waverly are in their earthly realm that’s called Purgatory, and may as well be Purgatory in many ways.

And the kind of the end goal is not the same end goal, it’s a much bigger end goal to end the concept of hell proper, completely, and replace it with something more humane. And plus, to be perfectly honest, my friend Claudia summarized the whole thing as “Dante, but gay”, and that just really stuck with me. I was like kind of like this going out, yes, it is a part of this fic.

But I think the kind of the idea of the narrator, the _Divine Comedy_ idea of that wanderer, the journeyer going through hell, going on a kind of journey of discovery really resonated with me when I was thinking about Nicole, because I think – I’ve spoken to The Gay Smurf about this before as well, and I think she’s really kind of, y'know, I think she feels that really strongly, that sometimes Nicole as a character is underestimated. Because she’s against this, y'know, she’s next to Waverly who’s so kind of obviously whip smart, and I think the kind of detective smarts Nicole – it’s not as obvious, always, I think. And I think that was really something that I was really interested in, for this story to just be about demonstrating that different form of whip smartness that comes out when Nicole is put in this situation, the fact the she actually out-smarts Michael who, y'know, is a kind of eternal being with incredible intelligence.

And that kind of placing that premium on Nicole as the narrator through which we see this story, because she’s the one who’s really – who really is able to actually find a solution at the end, y'know, I kind of think Waverly and Wynonna are absolutely essential to the show-down at the end of my fic, but really Nicole is essential because she is the one who fixes the gun. It’s kind of, that was kind of very pointedly me saying: Nicole is essential to this. She is. They couldn’t do it without her.

So yeah, that diverged completely from the _Divine Comedy_ , but –

DARKWICCAN : That’s fine. [laughter]

RUTH : The _Orpheus and Eurydice_ , though, I think is absolutely right, and as I said, I think that’s the joy, isn’t it, of fic, of any fictional thing, is that if that’s what you’ve seen in it, then that’s what it is, and that’s what it can be. But taking it to a point of kind of, y'know, was there intention on my part. It certainly did occur to me, _Orpheus and Eurydice_ certainly occurred to me, and I think also not just for Nicole and Waverly, but also for Wynonna. Because I think a lot of this story is about Wynonna, and I think that the whole Wynonna having to commit to her actions at the end, and kind of not being able to look back at Alice or Dolls, and having to actually make a choice. That kind of, I think that resonated quite a lot, to me, in terms of the kind of _Orpheus and Eurydice_ idea, for sure.

LARAGH : So you mentioned earlier about the emotional journeys that the characters went on. And really, every single one of them did go on a huge emotional journey. Even Alice, ultimately, went on an emotional journey. So I wondered how did you find weaving them from all of this, both together and, y'know, as separate journeys? And was there any character in particular you felt the most affinity with?

RUTH : Another great question, and so hard. I feel asking characters that you had the most affinity with is really tricky, isn’t it? ‘Cause it’s like: I love them all. I love them all equally, I feel for them all.

Yeah, I think the weaving, I think from the perspective of writing it, I was quite aware that – I know that we talked a bit earlier about how there’s a lot of kind of angst in the story, and there’s a lot of kind of emotional pain really, and I think one of the great things about _Wynonna Earp_ the show is that balance between the light and dark, and they just the fact that actually - I know it’s partly about the acting, as well, because I think the cast is just incredible at conveying that depth of pain. But also the show remains with that tonal lightness which completely puts it in balance so that it’s not – I think in another show, or in other hands, that could be really jarring, and I think that was one of the things I was quite aware of as I was writing, is that actually there’s a lot death in this story, and that there’s a lot of pain, but I think there’s also – I knew going into it that actually death is not death, in this story.

And I think that’s one of the real kind of looking out aspect of it, when I thought of the concept, it kinds of allows, very easily, without me actually needing to do very much hard work, it allows for a great depth of an emotional spectrum for characters, because of the circumstances, without there actually being a real end to a story, or an end to a relationship because Nicole is not dead in the way that, y'know, there’s not an end to that journey. There is a kind of life after.

So I think that was really – that made it easier for me, because it was not as though anybody was dying in it with a real – apart from Jeremy, I’m sorry, may his soul rest in peace – apart from Jeremy, then everybody else who dies is not truly dead, it’s a story that keeps on going. Which allows, I think, the emotional pain to have a kind of payoff, but also allows there to be, simultaneously, y'know, ostensibly distressing storylines going on that actually have some lightness to them. And think, y'know, I kind of went into it with that knowledge, that the payoff would be chapter seven, eight and nine, and it was a bit of a, y'know, how can I cause more pain before chapter seven – no, I’m just joking. [laughter]

I wanted to say also, the other thing that I was thinking, which is true, but I’m now going to be really flippant about it, was the go big, or go homo, on the emotional pain, and payoff. [laughter] Just to quote fanfic, that’s not my own brilliant phrase, that’s from like brilliant fic.

But yeah, that’s kind of what I was thinking, like this is all building to something, there is a payoff to it, and there will be a payoff, I’m not just doing this to try and make people, y'know, suffer. So I think that really helped me to kind of hopefully get the write line between not really overplaying it, but also making sure that there was enough in there that every character who was going on an emotional journey was doing it in a way that wasn’t kind of overloading the story with too much of that.

I think also because, to me, the emotional journey that Wynonna and Nicole go through is in a lot of ways kind of similar, just kind of they reflect back on each other. So I think the fact that they had fairly similar journeys in terms of like making those choices of sacrifice, and I think the way I think about it is that Nicole started a lot further down the same path to Wynonna, and that by the end of it, Wynonna has a very similar sense of, “Yes I will actually myself, and I don’t have the same difficulty doing that as I did when I found out I was the heir”. And I think that –

DARKWICCAN : So – so –

RUTH : Yeah?

DARKWICCAN : So let’s talk about that for a second. Let’s talk about that sacrifice. After the curse is broken, you had Wynonna chose Waverly, and therefore Nicole, over Alice.

RUTH : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : That’s a huge decision to make, for a mother. And so I’m wondering, do you feel that canon Wynonna would do the same thing?

RUTH : I will say yes, and I will tell you for why. I think it’s really, it’s so fascinating to me that that’s how you interpret it, because not - this is not me saying that I think you’re wrong - just to say that’s absolutely not how I interpret her choice in the fic.

And I know I’m doing a bit of talking as if I didn’t write it, but like just looking at the fic as if I didn’t write it, I think, to me, Wynonna is completely motivated by the bigger picture. Like Waverly actually says in the story, Wynonna just can’t stop being the hero. She can’t stand by and let somebody suffer in the Bad Place who doesn’t belong there, and she can’t accept that the system is broken the way that is.

So there definitely is a sense that she is doing this for Waverly, but I definitely also don’t see it as choosing Waverly over Alice. ‘Cause I see it as actually what Wynonna is doing is she’s looking at what’s happening, and she’s saying, “Nicole is in the Bad Place, she doesn’t deserve to be in the Bad Place, if I stand by and don’t do anything about that, when I can do something about that, what kind of person am I for Alice?”

And also that bigger picture of everybody in that world, as she then finds out, everybody who’s just kind of a middling person, is also being – which is such a terrible phrase, but it’s just speaking the Good Place language, y'know – the mediocre people are all being tortured, and she can’t abide by that. And I think that’s how I see it, very strongly, is that she’s not picking Waverly over Alice, but she’s doing it actually as all part of a consistent belief that y'know making the world a better place is her responsibility as a person, and as a mother.

So I think she would make that same choice, if it came down to exactly the same circumstances, I think that canon Wynonna would definitely make the same choice. But I can see, absolutely, and again, I am not saying that I think that you’ve interpreted the story wrong in any way, just that it’s so, I think that there’s so much nuance there that you know, it certainly could be interpreted as that, picking Waverly. But also I think either way that you read it, that you read her actions, I think for me, personally, the relationship between Waverly and Wynonna is just – it’s probably my favorite part of the entire show. It’s just that relationship is just so wonderful to me that I think y'know, there is certainly an element in it of Wynonna being unable to live with herself if there was something that she could do to kind of ease Waverly’s suffering, and she didn’t do it.

So, yeah, I don’t see it as incompatible with the kind of depth of feeling that she has for Alice, or anything like that, but as part of actually that – who Wynonna is in canon, which to me is somebody who just, she really hates being the hero, but she literally cannot stop being the hero. She can’t do it, she just can’t stand by, it’s just not possible for her to.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and I would love to deep dive into Wynonna and Waverly’s relationship. Unfortunately, we’re out of time. Which means that we have come to our final question. It is the question that we ask all of our authors, but before I pass over the Laragh to ask you this, I just wanna say it has been so wonderful having you on today, Ruth, and I really hope that you can continue to create fanfiction for _Wynonna Earp_ because your work is just truly spectacular. It’s on a level that I’ve really not seen, and so you must please continue to grace us with your talent, because it is absolutely mind-bogglingly good.

LARAGH : I concur with all of that, yeah.

RUTH : Thank you, that’s really kind of you. I don’t know how I could refuse after that –

DARKWICCAN : Good. Oh, goody, it worked.

LARAGH : Okay, so, final question. You’re stranded on a desert island, with only fanfiction to read. Which would you choose?

RUTH : It’s such a hard question. I love that you sneak it in at the end, as well, just like, oh, by the way, there’s this horrible choice, you only have one fanfic to read for the rest of your life, what could it possibly be? Okay, so my honest answer, which is – I’m going to have to direct everybody to it, I feel like this is a little, like, plug. My honest answer is a fic by Hans, socallmedaisy, and it’s ‘Hold Me Closer’, from the Brittana fandom. But it’s not on AO3, so you have to all go to her blog and dig around for it. But it’s just, I think because of the way that I kind of entered the fandom, into Brittana, it’s just an absolutely incredible example of, I think, how to write something really, really well. So if I only had one to read, it would be that one. But, having said that, I feel I’m sure that no one else can ever just pick one fanfic, ‘cause that’s so cruel.

DARKWICCAN : So ‘Hold Me Closer’ by social media daisy [sic]. On Tumblr?

RUTH : socallmedaisy, yeah, on Tumblr.

DARKWICCAN : socallmedaisy.

RUTH : Yep.

DARKWICCAN : Okay.

RUTH : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : And great. So what I’ll do is we always provide a link to our author’s desert island fics -

RUTH : Yeah, everyone go read that.

DARKWICCAN : - in our show notes. Yeah, so we’ll definitely direct our listeners to go check that out. But Ruth, thank you so much for coming on and chatting with us today, this has been an absolute delight.

LARAGH : It was great to talk to you today, Ruht.

RUTH : It has been a delight for me too, thank you so much.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Tremendous thanks to Doctoruth for joining us to chat about her fic! Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Sam’s Band (Pop Version) by Erik Barone; Bestest Detectives in the World by Kan R. Gao, feat. Laura Shigihara; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast


	25. Soul Deep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week soul sisters DarkWiccan and Delayne dive into their favorite 'Soul Mate' AU Series! Then they chat with the series' author: HaughtPocket!

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/soul-deep)

 

Read the Fics!:

 

[Unorthodox Soulmates (Series)](https://archiveofourown.org/series/689994) by HaughtPocket

 

Episode Artwork by: [Chantal Zeegers](http://youareavision.tumblr.com/)

 

 

 

HaughtPocket's Desert Island Fic: [Purgatory Rodeo Series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/530245) by tinyvariations

 

Transcript by FlyingFanatic

 

EFA Episode 25 – Soul Deep

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host DarkWiccan and with me, as always, is the lovely and talented -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And this week we are listening to our favorite albums of Al Green, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cook. Maybe a little Otis Reading, possibly a little Ray Charles, and of course we have got to get in there, Marvin Gaye. And you do you know why, Delayne?

DELAYNE : [laughter] Is it ‘cause we have some soul?

DARKWICCAN : That’s right, we got soul, mhm. [laughter] But okay, in fairness, this episode is not about soul music. No, it’s actually about soulmates, and of course we have our favorite soulmates of any fandom ever, in the form of Waverly Earp and Nicole Haught, Wayhaught, from _Wynonna Earp_. And that’s why we’re all here, isn’t it?

DELAYNE : Hey, DW?

DARKWICCAN : Hey, what’s up?

DELAYNE : Do you believe in soulmates, as a concept? As a thing? Is that something you believe in?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I do.

DELAYNE : Awesome.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, how about you?

DELAYNE : Indeed, I do, yeah, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I would say my wife is my soulmate, for sure.

DELAYNE : And my wife is mine, so hey, there you go.

DARKWICCAN : Hey, lucky us. Do you know how lucky we are? We are damn lucky.

DELAYNE : Do you ever play the What If game? What if you had met your wife, given different circumstances, if circumstances of your life had changed, how you would meet your wife?

DARKWICCAN : Yes, and no.

DELAYNE : Just me then?

DARKWICCAN : Well, I mean, like –

DELAYNE : It’s a fun question.

DARKWICCAN : - well it is fun. I mean, I’m sure that I would have met my wife at some point, if I hadn’t met her the way that I had. Bluh-bluh – yeah, that made sense. It would have probably taken a lot longer, though, when I think about the other, different roads my life might have gone down. Circumstances, y'know, changing and whatnot, but I’m sure I would have met her eventually. How I would have met her? No, no, don’t know, but I know I would have.

DELAYNE : Yeah, yeah. I actually like to think about that. It’s kind of fun. Like, ‘cause Becky really wanted to join the military, and at one point I had actually turned in a recruitment card, so, y'know, what if we were both in the military and met that way?

DARKWICCAN : Well, yeah, that’s one way.

DELAYNE : So that’s a fun game that I like to play, so. But, yeah, we could sit and talk about our wives a lot, but let’s talk about some fics about soulmates.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, let’s do that. ‘Cause I could also sit here and talk for hours about my wife, but that’s not why we’re here. This is the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , not the [Borat impression] _My Wife_ [normal voice] _Fiction Addiction_ , so.

DELAYNE : [laughter] You used a voice, and now I just can’t.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] I used a vaguely Borat voice, and now it’s done, it’s over. Thank everybody for tuning in, we hope you have a great rest of the week. I have broken Delayne. Okay, but seriously, okay, so soulmate fics. There are a lot of soulmate fics out there. It’s very popular.

DELAYNE : Oh my gosh, there are a lot.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s a super popular trip to go down, especially with Wayhaught, ‘cause it’s just right there, it’s in canon that they’re soulmates.

DELAYNE : Right? How often do we get soulmates very clearly defined?

DARKWICCAN : And so early on in a series, as well.

DELAYNE : Right. I mean –

DARKWICCAN : Y'know?

DARKWICCAN : – it’s rare.

DARKWICCAN : It is exceedingly rare. You see it happen once in a while with straight ships, on other shows. I can’t think of a gay ship – I mean, there’s always the implication, but there’s never the canonization, y'know? So this, I think, is for me, anyway. I’m sure that there are folks out there – please tweet @EFA_podcast if you know of other media where a gay couple, or lesbian couple – or, I should say, women loving women, or male loving male, couple – is canonized as being soulmates. Because I, personally, for me, Wayhaught’s my first.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, but as a result, what a gift, oh my gosh, Emily Andras. [deep sigh]

DELAYNE : [laughter] You okay there?

DARKWICCAN : I’m fine. It’s just I swooned for a second, I’m fine. But no, seriously, like, what a gift to give us. I mean, it’s just so incredible. And as a result there are quite a lot of soulmate fics out there. So we had to roll up our selves and kinda, y'know, dig through a whole bunch, and we found four that we were like, “Actually, these are really, really good, and really interesting, and very unusual.” And the extra bonus point is; they’re all by the same author. And they’re part of a series. I was like, oh hey, so we can do the four fic thing that we like to do on show, that’s all one author. How nifty is that?

DELAYNE : It’s super nifty. And I like the name of the series: ‘Unorthodox Soulmates’.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, ‘Unorthodox Soulmates’, by HaughtPocket. [sings] HaughtPocket.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I was waiting for you to do it, and you did it, and then still thrown.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Well, I’m happy to meet your expectations, and yet still catch you off-guard.

DELAYNE : So let’s talk about ‘Unsteady’.

DARKWICCAN : Do you want me to sing that one, too?

DELAYNE : No.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Huh?

DELAYNE : No, you’re fine.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, thank you, appreciate it.

DELAYNE : And this one – it’s great that I asked you if you believe in soulmates, ‘cause this summary is: “What happens when your soulmate doesn't believe in soulmates?”

DARKWICCAN : Twist.

DELAYNE : Uh-huh. And this is a soulmark – soulmate identifying marks – in this case, ‘cause this is something that is seen fairly common, in this case it’s actual the name of your soulmate. And another interesting part is that not everyone has the soulmark.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I thought that was interesting. Yeah, because typically in soulmate fics where they have soulmarks as part of the story, everybody has a soulmark. So everybody has a soulmate. So I thought it was really interesting, as you say, that HaughtPocket chose to deviate from that and say, well, no, some people have soulmarks, and some people don’t. It does add an element of free will.

DELAYNE : But Waverly does not react very well when Nicole Haught shows up with a Waverly Earp tattoo to work on – ‘cause it’s also a ranch AU – to work on the ranch, and she is mad, how dare her soulmate just show up. Because she did not have a good role model, in that her parents where soulmates, and that did not go well.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it has nothing to do with the fact that Nicole’s a woman, and everything to do with the fact that her parents, Ward and Michelle Earp, were completely awful together, just utterly terrible for each other.

DELAYNE : So, yeah, I mean, I definitely, as much I’ve read y'know all the variations that these soulmate marks can incorporate, I like this one a lot. And of course, they do work past Waverly’s initial hesitation, ‘cause of course –

DARKWICCAN : Well, Wayhaught is endgame, so yeah, of course she’d get over it at some point. But I do like how Nicole defends herself, y'know? Nicole is like, “You really, really hurt me when you immediately rejected me. Here is was, my entire life waiting for this incredible moment when I meet my soulmate, and you scream “Bullshit” in my face, and run away. So that hurt”.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : But also Nicole can’t help but – because she’s Nicole, not because of the soulmark, but because she’s Nicole – she can’t help but try to do right by Waverly, and help Waverly. And slowly, over time, y'know, Waverly gets to finding that she likes Nicole back, and hmm. But I also like, of course, that HaughtPocket included the lesbian art form of photography.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I didn’t realize that was one of our things. Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, oh yeah, have you not been on Tumblr recently? Yeah, it’s – they go through and then catalogue like all of these lesbian films, or women loving women films, for photography is like – one of the characters is a photographer. Like _Carol_ , _Disobedience_ – oh, gosh, I know there are others, those are just the first two that pop off of my brain. But it’s kind of the thing is that all lesbians play pool, as well.

DELAYNE : Oh, right, right.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : That is like my obsession with a camera when I was younger. That’s all.

DARKWICCAN : There you go, mhm, mhm, yeah. No if HaughtPocket had had Nicole taking photos of Waverly while she played pool, that would have been like –

DELAYNE : [laughter] Mind-blowing.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, wow. [laughter] I feel like there should be a third thing, like there should be a trifecta.

DELAYNE : We’ll think of it later.

DARKWICCAN : We’ll figure it out, eventually. Or pop culture media will fill in the blank for s. Or somebody on Twitter will tell us. But yeah, so that was ‘Unsteady’, and of course, I’m not gonna sing it, but every time I read the title, I hear the song in my head. It is, actually it works really perfectly. [laughter] Okay, so that’s ‘Unsteady’, and that’s not the first one of the four in this group, as far as when it was written, but it’s the first one that’s listed when you pull up the ‘Unorthodox Soulmates’ series.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So the first fic from the series that I’m gonna talk about is called ‘In Her Eyes’. And almost said “by HaughtPocket”, but we know that ‘cause they’re all by HaughtPocket.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Habits die hard, man.

DARKWICCAN : So – yeah, I know, right? So are you familiar with the movie of the similar name, _In Your Eyes_?

DELAYNE : No, no, I’m not.

DARKWICCAN : Okay. It’s okay, it’s a pretty decent film, and it’s basically the premise is that these two individuals, in the case of the film a male and a female, wake up one morning and are able to see through the other person’s eyes. And this of course jars them, because they’re not seeing their own space. They’re looking through someone else’s eyes, and seeing their space, and then find that they can hear each other when they speak, as well. Unfortunately they do have to speak aloud, so they can’t just think with their minds to communicate. That would be too easy.

DELAYNE : Then you wouldn’t look like a crazy person.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm. But one is a northeastern state, and one is a southwestern state, and so it takes them a while to actually meet in person. Now, of course, there’s drama, and y'know all sorts of stuff that happens in the meantime of them finally getting together, but the gimmick of the whole premise is, again, that they’re able to see through each other’s eyes, and hear each other speak. Not thoughts, but they can speak. So that is the exact same premise here, and HaughtPocket makes no bones about it. She’s like “yep, this is based on that so okay, moving on”. But in this case, of course, it’s Waverly and it’s Nicole, and it’s just a very sweet sort of study of these two characters and how they’d communicate if they couldn’t see each other in reality, but only like looking in mirrors, and y'know what would that mean in there personal lives, where they are in their spaces. It’s just working through all of that and finally coming together in the end, and it’s all romantic, and fluffy, and a little bit of angst. Little bit of angst, not a whole lot. But, yeah, and she also took it from a Tumblr prompt, I think someone prompted her on Tumblr, and was like, “Hey, I watched –

DELAYNE : Inspired by -

DARKWICCAN : “ – this movie, can you write a Wayhaught version of this?” So she did, and it’s very sweet. And it is unorthodox, as far as soulmate sorties go, so it fits in the series.

DELAYNE : Yeah, that’s just weird to me. [laughter] Just like, I mean earlier, what I said, I think it was the werewolf episode where like the telepathy, being connected. I don’t – I don’t –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, ‘Lone Wolf’? Yeah.

DELAYNE : Like, I don’t think I can handle that. But then there’s times that my wife is just like, laughing, and she was like, “I really wish I could just plug my brain into a projector, so you could just see what I’m seeing. It would be so much easier”.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, tell me about it, same with me. Like, my brain just tells me jokes all the time, and sometimes they’re like visual jokes, so that when I try to explain to my wife what is making me laugh so hard, she’s just looking at me like, “What the..? I married a crazy person. That’s not funny.”

DELAYNE : [laughter] Like, you had to be there, in my head.

DARKWICCAN : You had to be there, in my brain, to see this joke. Yeah, yep. [laughter] I would say, the four of them, it is the weakest of the four, but saying that, they’re all very strong.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : This story.

DELAYNE : And it definitely adds to the variety that this whole series is.

DARKWICCAN : But I’m gonna toss it back to you, Delayne, because I think we’re coming up on what is actually yours and my favorite of the four.

DELAYNE : This one is called ‘The Tree’. [patting noise] “She's trekked the desert in search of The Tree. The Tree has answers. What is she looking for?” This one – I don’t even think I can describe how awesome it is, because it’s at the… It’s two chapters, one is Nicole, one is Waverly, and I just – it – I’m actually, I’m scrolling through it – it says none of this makes sense. It just blows your mind, and then all of a sudden it gets to the end and you’re like “Oh, wow”.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so not giving anything away.

DELAYNE : I’m not. [laughter] It’s awesome.

DARKWICCAN : Essentially, ‘The Tree’ is made up of two chapters, right?

DELAYNE : Yep.

DARKWICCAN : And the first chapter is Nicole, and the second chapter is Waverly. And they’re – each chapter is they’re essentially on a quest.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : They’re on a quest to find The Tree, whatever that means. And both quests take place in extremely different scenarios. [noise] Nicole’s landed in a desert that she’s trekking through, and she comes across an old house that has a light inside, and she goes in, and there she finds the strange woman, who turns out to be Waverly.

DELAYNE : The strange woman brandishing a shotgun at her.

DARKWICCAN : Well, it wouldn’t be Waverly without the shotgun. It’s an identifying characteristic.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Right?

DARKWICCAN : And so they spend the evening getting to know each other, and they keep talking about this unseen threat on the outside, that we – it feels sort of like zombies, kinda.

DELAYNE : Yeah. But it’s much more – it’s much scarier.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So the first story sort of deals with Nicole meeting Waverly, and them finding a little peace in the evening, and then defending themselves against these creatures, whatever they are. And then the second one is Waverly on a quest, again to find The Tree. And we now have a larger idea of what’s going on, because we find out at the end of Nicole’s quest the larger picture, what’s going on here. So we have that knowledge going into the second part, where we see Waverly’s quest. And Waverly, instead of facing a desert has to face a maze that she needs a guide to get through. And in this case the guide is Nicole. And so it’s about them making their way through the maze and, again, growing closer as they’re going through this journey together, and finally what happens when they get to The Tree. We find out in this scenario what The Tree is. But what The Tree is in this scenario is not always going to be the case in other quests. Quest lines, if that makes any sense. It’s really hard to describe this story without giving away the game of it.

DELAYNE : Right? Yeah, it’s just – go read it. Like, this is –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : - something like – just – if this is the first or only one, just go read it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, if you read no other – like Delayne is saying – if you read no other story in this series, read ‘The Tree’. It is so good, it is so well written, and so well-conceived, and so creative, and imaginative, and I could just go on, and on, but yeah. It’s definitely our favorite, for sure.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Which means we have to move on. We have to move onto the fourth one. Which is my second favorite.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. It’s also an incredibly strong piece. It’s called ‘Dream of Red’, and this one – this one – Delayne, I think, has more interesting theories about this one than I do. So I’ll just give the premise real quick and then Delayne, I would like you to kinda wax philosophical, if you don’t mind.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Okay.

DARKWICCAN : Okay? Cool. So the premise here is at the start of the story Waverly has just awoken from a dream where she has dreamed of red. The color red. And it’s very important, and she knows this. She’s with Wynonna, so the sisters are together from the outset, and they are both on a journey. And their journey – they don’t know where they’re going, really, they just know when they’ll get there. And what is guiding them, more than anything, is Waverly’s dreams and visions. And so they’re just sort of following her intuition based on these intermittent dreams that she’s had, that are leading her ever-closer to finding whatever it is she’s looking for. And when they do, they discover that what Wynonna was looking for was Alice, and what Waverly was looking for was Nicole. Doye. [Delayne laughs] It’s always gonna be.

But what’s interesting is what happens when they find them, because that’s where there’s a bit of a twist, that I certainly wasn’t expecting, in that – okay, I’ll just say it. I’ll just say it. In that – well, Alice recognizes Wynonna immediately, Nicole doesn’t recognize Waverly. Even though Waverly as soon as she sets eyes on Nicole all of her memories of them together – apparently they’ve been separated, and have had to find their way back to each other. We don’t know what separated them, we don’t know why they were separated, that’s not answered, and it’s really not important. I don’t think, anyway.

DELAYNE : Yeah, it’s –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s - yeah – it’s all about the journey. [Delayne laughs] But, essentially, typically, when people are reunited when they’ve been separated and forgotten each other, they suddenly [whooshing noise] remember everything. And while Wynonna and Alice have this experience, and Waverly has this experience, Nicole’s just like, “You seem great. No idea who you are”. [Delayne laughs] And so the rest of the story is that journey, of Nicole either will she ever remember, or will she and Waverly just develop a new relationship with no previous history, at least on one side. Which is very awkward, and very difficult, but they’re meant to be together, so, y'know, no matter what, even with the death of their past, they now at least have their future. So it’s a really interesting – and I’m not gonna tell you if she remembers or not, you gotta read the story, hah hah. [Delayne laughs] But, so it’s one of those things where like even if they don’t have the past, they still have the future. So there’s at least that. Okay, Delayne?

DELAYNE : Yeah, it’s interesting because like – like, it’s interesting, because as we’ve seen in other media where people forget, or one person forgets, there’s that whole idea of falling in love all over again. So, I do like that, even though, y'know, Nicole doesn’t have a memory, she’s still like feeling a pull, I guess. And, of course, Waverly is just like – [laughter] – yeah, like, didn’t think I could be more in love with you, but here we are.

DARKWICCAN : But you had a theory about what was going on –

DELAYNE : Right.

DARKWICCAN : As far as the why and the wherefore.

DELAYNE : Yeah, yeah, yeah. So definitely when you start out like, it’s very much this post-apocalyptic feel, like you said, Waverly is being guided by these dreams. They don’t know where they’re going, they don’t know what’s going on. And for some reason once I got past that idea that maybe this isn’t some post-event where something happened to everyone, and they all got separated. I got this bizarre feeling that this is their afterlife, and that this search then is – they have to find each other again in the afterlife. Either to be together in the afterlife, or – I’m a person who believes in reincarnation, or y'know to move onto the next one. So that’s just this feeling that I got when reading it, and I don’t know why. I don’t – if anyone else, if you read this before you listened to us, please let me know if you got that vibe. I wanna know if I’m not the only crazy person.

DARKWICCAN : I don’t think you’re crazy, I think that’s not an illogical leap to make. I mean, if you’re trying to piece together the whys and the wherefores, I mean that is definitely a possibility. I almost wonder if HaughtPocket even knows what the premise there is. Like what is – she may, or she may not. Some authors are just like “eh. I just want this to be the scenario, so therefore it is. Moving forward -”

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : “ – I don’t need to justify it, it’s a mystery, hah ha”. And some others will create this massive mythology that supports their story, that they can dive into for hours, and be like, “yes, as a matter of fact, this was influenced by the fill-in-the-Greek-myth here, and the thing over there, and the…”. Yeah, so –

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : - but the only person who knows for sure is the author.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Hey, that gives me a great idea.

DARKWICCAN : What’s that, Delayne?

DELAYNE : [laughter] Maybe we should ask her.

DARKWICCAN : [gasp] Gasp! That is a fantastic idea. I am totally on board with that, yeah, we should totally see if we can pin HaughtPocket down and ask her some questions. Good thing she already agreed to come on the show. [Delayne laughs] So, yep, we’ve got HaughtPocket joining us for segment two today, but before we can get to that we’ve got a couple of things.

[CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : HayWire by David Fenn

Hot 4 Haught is the place to go for all of your stylish Earper Snapback needs and more!

Boasting an impressive catalog of looks and design options, Hot 4 Haught's snapbacks are guaranteed to pair well with any of your _Wynonna Earp_ wearable merch.

If you're looking for something other than the coolest hats in town, check out their amazing selection of apparel and accessories.

Visit Hot 4 Haught dot Big Cartel dot com to start shopping today!

Hot 4 Haught - Put a Lid on It!

ADVERTISMENT ENDS

MUSIC : Beyond the Gates by David Fenn

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody, and welcome back to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my lovely and talented co-host –

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And as you know from our first segment today we are very excited to be talking to the fabulous author of the incredible ‘Unorthodox Soulmates’ series, HaughtPocket, who we will today refer to as either Sarah, or Pocket. So Sarah Pocket, welcome to the show.

SARAH POCKET : Hello, hello, hello.

DELAYNE : Sarah Pocket, I like that.

SARAH POCKET : Sarah Pocket, there we go.

DARKWICCAN : [sings] Sarah Pocket. [normal voice] There you go. It doesn’t quite –

SARAH POCKET : Every time I see a – [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Okay. Well, thank you for taking time out of your day to chat with us today, Sarah, this is awesome.

SARAH POCKET : Thank you for working for an hour to get this to work.

DARKWICCAN : Totally worth it, my friend, totally and completely worth it.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So, okay, so I gotta ask you the question that we start off with almost all of our authors, and that is: how did you get into this crazy game called fanfiction?

SARAH POCKET : Youtube!

DARKWICCAN : Really? That’s an interesting. I would never assumed Youtube would be the infection vector. What happened?

SARAH POCKET : Oh, Wayhaught video. A Wayhaught video.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, okay, okay.

SARAH POCKET : Obviously. Watched that over and over, and was like I’ll just watch the show.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so it was –

SARAH POCKET : Might as well.

DARKWICCAN : So getting into _Wynonna Earp_ is what got you into fanfiction?

SARAH POCKET : What started me into writing it, yeah. Well, okay, I had read a couple things before, and I was like, “What? What is this? This is weird”. Like – and this was before my like, my – what do you call it – the word is slipping, it’s gone. The revolution, y'know, the “Oh, this why”.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, before you had a self-actualization.

SARAH POCKET : Yeah. And I was like, “What is this? This is kind of like, okay it’s hot, but it’s weird”. So I just kind of left it, and then I started watching _Wynonna Earp_ and I don’t know how I found fanfic. It was probably on Tumblr, because everything is on Tumblr.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : This is true.

SARAH POCKET : Like everything and more. But I first started reading on the fanfiction site...?

DARKWICCAN : Fanfic dot net?

SARAH POCKET : Yeah. I believe the first one I read was ‘Ten Times…’

DARKWICCAN : Oh, ‘Ten Times Waverly Earp Was Not on a Date With Nicole Haught’? Yeah.

SARAH POCKET : I think it was that one. And then I found that it was on a different website, and I discovered the world.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : You found AO3, there was no going back.

SARAH POCKET : It was gay black hole. [laughter] There was no returning. I just sucked right in, no returning from that.

DARKWICCAN : So let me ask you, then, so was it really – you had nt expereicned, or really read any fanfiction prior to _Wynonna Earp_ at all, or you hadn’t written any, or anything like that? This was like –

SARAH POCKET : Hadn’t written fanfiction, I write other stuff –

DARKWICCAN : Okay.

SARAH POCKET : - but hadn’t written fanfiction. Because that part of me was like, don’t go there, that’s weird. [laughter] At that point in time.

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha.

SARAH POCKET : But the more I read, the more I was like, “This is actually very interesting character study, and I like that, that’s very cool, and it’s not weird at all”.

DELAYNE : No.

DARKWICCAN : It is not, nope.

SARAH POCKET : It’s not weird.

DARKWICCAN : No.

DELAYNE : They try to tell us that it’s weird, that we’re weird.

SARAH POCKET : We are weird.

DARKWICCAN : We are weird, but that’s not why we’re weird.

DELAYNE : Right?

SARAH POCKET : Anyway. I totally forgot your question, see, this is what I meant.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, no, no, it’s fine, I just was asking how you got involved in fanfiction. So it sounds like -

SARAH POCKET : Yep, so that’s it, so that’s, y'know.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, you covered it.

SARAH POCKET : That’s it. Still getting sucked further and further.

DELAYNE : So how about we talk about the fics we’re talking about, right?

DARKWICCAN : Crazy idea, Delayne, I don’t know.

SARAH POCKET : That’s crazy.

DARKWICCAN : I don’t – sure, I guess just this once.

[laughter]

SARAH POCKET : That’s absurd nonsense.

DELAYNE : Sarah, we’re gonna start at the top, with the first one that’s marked number one, ‘Unsteady’.

SARAH POCKET : Oh, okay.

DELAYNE : I – why did you chose not to give everyone in the universe a soul mark?

SARAH POCKET : Do you wanna know the real reason why?

DARKWICCAN : Yes, that’s why we’re here.

SARAH POCKET : The very real reason why. Because in the _Wynonna Earp_ fanfic there was, y'know, some people that, given Wynonna, some people paired Wynonna with Doc, and some people paired her with Dolls, and I was like, “I don’t know”. [laughter] Maybe she’s just gonna be a single, and I’m fine with that. She’s a strong woman.

DELAYNE : She doesn’t have to chose.

SARAH POCKET : She doesn’t need no man. [laughter] So, I mean, that was really…

DARKWICCAN : That was it, you just didn’t want them to have to – okay.

DELAYNE : You didn’t want to have to choose for Wynonna, and give her a mark?

SARAH POCKET : That’s such a terrible reason, that’s such a terrible answer.

DARKWICCAN : No it’s not.

SARAH POCKET : But that’s the reason. I was like, I don’t wanna deal with this, I don’t wanna. And she would make it fantastic, like, just on her own, y'know, just conquering the world. [laughter] Just doing shit.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, no, I think you’re right. And you know by making that decision, by not giving Wynonna a soul mark, you therefore established within the universe that not everybody gets soul marks, and that’s –

SARAH POCKET : Not everybody has a partner, and that’s totally okay.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that’s great, because y'know the thing in fanfiction is it seems to mostly be about coupling up, right? So it’s, I think, even though –

SARAH POCKET : I am very strong proponent of being single.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter]

SARAH POCKET : Because I –

DARKWICCAN : Nothing wrong with it. Not at all.

DELAYNE : Well, it’s interesting ‘cause then, y'know, you do mention that y'know Mama Earp and Papa Earp were marked, but clearly that was not the best.

SARAH POCKET : Yeah. I mean, and sometimes you end up with somebody, and it’s just like, why did that happen?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, just because you have a soulmate, doesn’t mean it’s a good match.

SARAH POCKET : Because pairings and romance is just – it’s just weird, there’s all kinds of things. All kinds of things.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely.

SARAH POCKET : Singlehood is one of them.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yes, singledom is totally, again, valid –

SARAH POCKET : It’s valid.

DARKWICCAN : - a valid life, way of living your life, absolutely.

SARAH POCKET : My singleness is valid.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, we validate you, Sarah, we validate you.

SARAH POCKET : I appreciate that. [laughter] I already knew that, but…

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, okay. Well, I’m just here to provide affirmation, y'know.

SARAH POCKET : To all the single people listening to this: you are valid.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, absolutely.

DELAYNE : That’s what we do here at _Earp Fiction Addiction_. We like to –

SARAH POCKET : We validate?

DELAYNE : - spread positivity, and validate all the lovely people.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. Yes, absolutely. And let’s continue to validate you, and validate your work, by moving onto ‘The Tree’. Which is actually, I think, my favorite of the four fics.

SARAH POCKET : Yeah?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it is.

SARAH POCKET : That one’s a doozy. That knocked me out.

DARKWICCAN : It’s really – it’s so creative, and so well written, it’s just – I love it. And I love all the visuals are just really dynamic, and almost cinematic, it’s just really fantastic.

SARAH POCKET : Thank you.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I’m just speaking truth, I’m just speaking truth. So the technician at the lab talks about how others who have come in for similar reasons typically have had rather dull, average dreams. Whereas, y'know, you’ve got Waverly and Nicole experiencing these sweeping narratives of dark and perilous situation where their very lives are at stake. So why this, and not some fluffy, running through the daffodils romance?

SARAH POCKET : ‘Cause they’re Wayhaught, I mean. [laughter] And I drew a lot, in that fic, I really kept their – the canon in my mind. Like, everything that they go through, it just felt right to me that they would die for each other in theses dreams, to find each other. Like, I love the stories of y'know, meeting in a coffee shop and all that, but I think – and we find this out in the AU episode – it’s like they’re destined to be together, no matter what. And those sweeping narrative are, I don’t know, it just fits who they are to each other, I think.

DARKWICCAN : They’re just too big for –

SARAH POCKET : Their romance is just – it’s so much bigger than, y'know, a Tinder date.

DARKWICCAN : Than a Nicholas Sparks novel.

[laughter]

SARAH POCKET : It’s so much bigger than a Nicholas Sparks novel, y'know what? Put that on my tombstone. [laughter] Wayhaught was so much bigger.

DELAYNE : I have to agree with DW here, in that ‘The Tree’ is definitely my favorite as well.

SARAH POCKET : Oh, yeah. It’s – there’s a special place in my heart for that one, because it was one of the first ones I wrote, and I’m still proud of it, I guess? I don’t know where it came from, I just sat down and started writing, and it happened.

DARKWICCAN : Those are the best.

SARAH POCKET : It was like a fever dream, just kept going.

DELAYNE : I’m curious about the symbolism of The Tree in ‘The Tree’, because –

SARAH POCKET : Yes.

DELAYNE : - I mean, yeah, it’s the name of the company, but is there more to that symbol?

SARAH POCKET : Is there more? Goodness, this is the question. I love trees, I love what they mean, I love the stories that you can tell with all of the symbolism, and the metaphors. They are just, like, ripe for stories, and, I’m gonna… I’m gonna go off in my own brain for a second, but I will come back, and –

DARKWICCAN : Sure, okay, go for it.

SARAH POCKET : But like in mythology you have – there’s a tree in probably every single, y'know, we’ve got –

DELAYNE : Creation myth?

SARAH POCKET : - like Yggdrasil in Norse mythology, you have the Tree of Life. Like, every different place has its own version of this, and they mean different things. But it’s all comes down to this like this sense that it’s holy, it’s important, almost life-giving. There’s so much purpose in these trees, and it’s kind of like a very – it’s life-giving. I mean, trees –

DARKWICCAN : Would you say it represents – sorry – would you say it represents like the meaning of life? In this story.

SARAH POCKET : I mean…

DARKWICCAN : I only ask because they’re both, y'know, in their dreams they’re sent on a quest to find The Tree, and The Tree will have answers.

SARAH POCKET : Right, right. I think it’s just this idea that trees are – there’s great purpose in them, and there’s, y'know, you go to – I think Yggdrasil is probably the biggest one, like influence here. Like the gods would go to this tree, every morning, and that’s where they would start their day. And it was like the most holy of places, and it’s not necessarily like their meaning, but that’s where they would go. So, I think Nicole –

DARKWICCAN : Okay.

SARAH POCKET : - like Nicole going to this place is sort of like, a place of knowledge, almost. Gaining perspective, and wisdom, and knowledge, really. Is almost what that is.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, yeah, that works, absolutely. I mean, as you were saying, trees themselves are fundamental in many myths across all cultures, and typically they serve some sort of a point of knowledge. So, yeah, that works. Yeah, makes sense. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter what you were thinking, it’s more on the reader to impart their own interpretation.

SARAH POCKET : Yeah, and it’s definitely very – I love for the reader to go, “This is what it means to me”.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

SARAH POCKET : That’s one of my favorite things, is for the reader to kind of interpret.

DELAYNE : Well, the botanist here loves trees. And – [laughter] that’s why –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, man, Delayne, I forgot you were a botanist.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : I’m sure it slipped your mind. So yeah, I mean, trees definitely have – my wife just got another tree tattoo. She has maybe twenty trees on her at this point now, it’s ridiculous. So, yeah, I mean trees mean a lot to me, and to my wife, so I was hoping it meant a lot to you, ‘cause that –

SARAH POCKET : Definitely, yeah.

DELAYNE : - gives me warm and fuzzies.

SARAH POCKET : Absolutely, I think it’s – they’re just beautiful, y'know? Yeah, I mean.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, the symbolism is so great, it’s indescribable.

SARAH POCKET : There is just so much, there’s so much symbolism in trees, there really is.

DARKWICCAN : So skipping ahead a little bit, to ‘Dream of Red’. I think, again, ‘The Tree’ is my favorite, ‘Dream of Red’ comes in a very, very tight second. The premise there is that soulmates are separated, and have to find one another again with no memoires, and they’re really only relying on dreams and visions, if they’re lucky enough to have those. So who or what is separating them, and why?

SARAH POCKET : This is another fun answer: I don’t know.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : That’s the best answer, actually.

DARKWICCAN : That’s great, yeah.

SARAH POCKET : I kind of just – I alluded to that, and I think it was during one of Nicole’s point of view parts, saying they didn’t know why, but they had to find their way back. Just kind of put a lampshade over that, and was like yeah, that’s good. But I felt like that wasn’t really, y'know, the focus of what I wanted to do. And when I went back and read through I was like, I could go in, and could go and do some research, and find a curse that might do this, but it’s not really pertinent to the story. It’s not, I mean, I feel like the reader can – I always like to assume that the reader is intelligent.

DARKWICCAN : It’s a good assumption, good assumption.

SARAH POCKET : I don’t like downplaying things and assuming, y'know, I have to spell everything out. That’s – because I don’t like it when I read things like that. So, and like I said, I like the reader to come to their own conclusions on some things. So, yeah, I kind of felt like, eh, I don’t really need to explain that bit. It was more the idea, y'know.

DARKWICCAN : Got it.

SARAH POCKET : They’re separated by something, by a curse, probably, and they need to find their way back.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. It almost felt like you were establishing that this something that happens often enough that society is aware of it, because you had several characters either remark, or think to themselves, that y'know some people never remember, or some people never have visions, sort of implying that it’s this larger event that’s happening, or has happened.

SARAH POCKET : That’s interesting, I didn’t think of it that way. I had thought – but I love that you think that, I love that you came away with that. This is why I like the reader to think of these things. So, in my mind what I was thinking was one big, long – it’s been going on a while, that’s what I was thinking. And that’s why there’s other people saying y'know, there’s the wording of, y'know, some folk never do, or – that’s where that came from. But I really like thought.

DELAYNE : So maybe more like a singular event, just extended?

SARAH POCKET : Yeah, yeah, that was what I was going for. But l love that that’s what you – see, this is why I love making things a little bit…

DARKWICCAN : Y'know, when you give the opportunity to readers to do some mental heavy lifting, and creative heavy lifting, it’s actually, it can be so rewarding, because again, yeah, the readers come up with things that never occurred to you. Like oh, yeah, would never have though, that’s right.

SARAH POCKET : I love hearing what readers have – I don’t get a lot of those comments, but the ones that I do, I’m like, I love that you said that, y'know? I love when people come and tell me their theories of –

DELAYNE : ‘Cause I kinda got like an afterlife sort of vibe.

SARAH POCKET : Yeah?

DELAYNE : Was what I took from it.

SARAH POCKET : I love it, tell me. Do we have time?

DELAYNE : [laughter] I’m curious why Nicole doesn’t remember Waverly right away, and is that significant? How is that significant?

SARAH POCKET : So writing this was kind of weird. Writing the soulmate fics is very, very weird. It’s a very weird process, for me. It’s like this muse is entirely different from just the normal writing, or, I guess other fics. And it like just hibernates, most of the time. And then when it comes out I just sit down and write. And it really is like a fever dream, like it’s weird, it’s bizarre, it’s very bizarre.

[dog panting] My dog is upset with me right now.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Your dog is upset with your writing process?

SARAH POCKET : She’s upset because I am on my phone and my tablet, and she is not happy with that. [dog panting] [laughter] So I didn’t actually go into it thinking Nicole’s not going to remember her. But when I got to the scene where they see each other, it was just – I just wrote that Nicole doesn’t know who she is.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

SARAH POCKET : And that was because that was just the direction it took me.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, they told you, you’re just taking dictation, yeah.

SARAH POCKET : Yeah, and it felt right. But now I look at it and I kind of feel this like, what do you do if this person that you love deeply doesn’t remember you. Like, I kind of looked like an amnesia situation, like if your partner has amnesia. Like, what do you do in that situation?

DARKWICCAN : Right.

SARAH POCKET : Like what is Waverly forgot Nicole? Or what if Nicole forgot Waverly? And I think that was just kinda an opportunity to explore that.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

SARAH POCKET : I think that was how I took that.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So when you sit down to write, generally, is it that you don’t really have – you have the initial idea, and then it’s just, hey, this is gonna go where it’s gonna go, or do you – is that just with the soulmate fics? Do you generally tend to plot, or…?

SARAH POCKET : Just with the soulmate fics. It’s very weird. Like, it’ll be a line, or like a visual, and it’ll just click, and I’ll go, oh, I need to write this. For example, with ‘The Tree’ it was I just saw a figure in the desert, wrapped up, looking over just barren desert, and I just sat down and started writing. I had no idea where it was gonna go. I had no idea what this meant, but I just sat and started writing it, and it was fun. It was a wild ride following this thing. It’s weird.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Well, I think it’s cool.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I love when the muses come, you just gotta go with it.

SARAH POCKET : Yeah, and it just kind of – yeah, and like ‘Dream of Red’ it was the very first line of the fic is about her waking up with sweat, I think? Yeah, that just kind of popped into my brain, and I was like, well, I gotta write this.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

SARAH POCKET : So that’s how they happen.

DARKWICCAN : That’s really cool, that they’re sort of just sort of organic quality to these stories. It’s just, you have a flash image, and you just kind of go, “Okay, and I’m going, and we’ll see what they tell me as I keep writing”.

DELAYNE : I think it’s kind of telling that this seems to, as you describing, only happens with the soulmate fics, like.

SARAH POCKET : It only happens with the soulmate fics. Only.

DELAYNE : That is very telling, to me.

SARAH POCKET : Yeah. I do research different kinds of soulmate like, mythology, and stuff like that, so I have –

DELAYNE : You have the background knowledge?

SARAH POCKET : Different ways to tell the story, I guess. But yeah, so when it does hit, it’s kind of just, I don’t have to go and like, well, what kind of soulmate can I use for this, like, shall I use the –

DELAYNE : Stopping your research.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, like it probably wouldn’t work off of a prompt, or anything, right? It sort of has to come to you?

SARAH POCKET : Right, I have – my Pinterest in a mess. I have a Wynonna board with tons of like sub-categories. One of them is photo prompts, and I looked at one the other day, and went, “Oh.” So, yeah. But I had seen it several times before, so that was kind of weird.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter]

SARAH POCKET : It was just that other day that that went, “Oh”.

DARKWICCAN : So does this mean there’s another soulmate fic coming our way in the future?

SARAH POCKET : I don’t know when, just…

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Well, no pressure, never, never, ever any pressure.

SARAH POCKET : Oh, I know. It’s just – but yeah, I’m working on it, because that picture it just hit me, almost like, “Oh, wow, okay, well, this is a thing”.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter] Oh, man, well if and when that becomes a story I’m very excited to read it.

SARAH POCKET : I hope so, I hoped it’s going to be okay.

DARKWICCAN : Well, Sarah, it has been so awesome talking to you today, thank you so much, again, for taking time out to sit down and chat. I really, really appreciate it.

SARAH POCKET : Thank you for talking to me, for inviting me here.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, like I said before, before we started recording, I’ve wanted to get you on the show for a while now, so I’m just really thrilled that a) you agreed to come on; and that b) we could make it happen.

DELAYNE : After a bit of finagling, but we made it happen.

SARAH POCKET : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : We figured it out, we got it working.

SARAH POCKET : AN hour of technology stuff, but yeah, yeah, it’s working, I loved it.

DARKWICCAN : Good, good. But now, of course –

SARAH POCKET : Oh, the desert island – oh!

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : I tell you what, we’ll buy you a little bit of time, we’ll buy you a little bit of time.

SARAH POCKET : I have been dreading this.

DARKWICCAN : So start thinking about it, before we ask the question, yeah, and Delayne, why don’t you go ahead and kind of talk about what you had pictured as far as the afterlife, and that scenario for that.

SARAH POCKET : But my brain is gonna be occupied, I won’t be able to –

[laughter]

DELAYNE : I don’t know what it was about it, but that’s where my brain went, that in the afterlife, I don’t why you would start at whatever, not necessarily whatever age, y'know, you would have passed, that’s not like the world just ended completely, y'know, and it’s either post-apocalyptic, or afterlife, but it all looks the same either way. No, it’s something about, I guess, when you’re on the other side, and you’re looking for that connection. Which is weird, ‘cause, I mean, y'know Waverly would also wanna connect with her sister, and they’re already together, but, yeah, I just – I just kinda got that weird feeling like, well maybe it’s just in the afterlife, and they are finding each other there.

SARAH POCKET : That’s so cool. I never thought of that.

DARKWICCAN : So, Delayne, what you’re saying is you read ‘Dream of Red’ and you saw dead people?

DELAYNE : [laughter] Dead people, yeah. That might – it might have something to do with a fic that I had wrote in my early days that never went anywhere, that yeah, there was sort of reincarnation and afterlife scenes, so.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, okay, got it, got it. So it’s just in your brain.

DELAYNE : It’s just in my brain, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Alright, well I think we’ve stalled long enough.

SARAH POCKET : I got my, I got it.

DARKWICCAN : You got it? Okay. Okay, Delayne?

DELAYNE : Alright.

DARKWICCAN : You wanna ask, or – you got it? Okay, you go for it.

DELAYNE : Yeah, okay. You are stranded on a desert island, and can have only one fanfic to read. What is it?

SARAH POCKET : For the record, this question is very difficult. [Delayne laughs] And you guys are awful -

DARKWICCAN : Yep. [laughter] We’ve been told this, we’ve been told this before.

SARAH POCKET : - for making me do this. Ugh.

DELAYNE : Checking bookmarks.

SARAH POCKET : Someone told me – I won’t even – okay. One of the very first fics that I read that was in _Wynonna Earp_ that was like, this is really good writing. Fanfic is like, has really – is like a huge opportunity here. But it was the ‘Purgatory Rodeo’ series by tinyvariations.

DARKWICCAN : Ooo, I don’t think I’ve read that one.

SARAH POCKET : What? Wait, no –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : Is it not on AO3?

SARAH POCKET : Are you serious, or are you joking?

DARKWICCAN : No, I’m serious.

SARAH POCKET : Okay, I can’t.

DARKWICCAN : You can’t? You can’t even?

SARAH POCKET : I full on, white girl, can’t even. [laughter] No, but I really can’t.

DARKWICCAN : Well, I’m excited to read it now.

SARAH POCKET : I’m so glad I said this one, wow.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

SARAH POCKET : tinyvariations is basically the _Wynonna Earp_ Shakespeare, for me.

DARKWICCAN : Okay.

SARAH POCKET : That’s what I – I said that to Smurf, I was like, “This person is Shakespeare”.

DARKWICCAN : Well, I’m happy to – I should say we – we are happy to provide a link to that story in our show notes, so that other folks who may have missed it, like I did, get the opportunity to read it, ‘cause –

SARAH POCKET : I can’t believe I’ve read something that you haven’t.

DARKWICCAN : I know, it’s weird.

DELAYNE : She has read everything.

SARAH POCKET : You’re gonna read this –

DARKWICCAN : Well, I should say I’ve started reading –

SARAH POCKET : Listen, listen. You’re gonna read this – listen, Linda, listen – you’re gonna read this, and you’re gonna go, “I have to get this person on the show”.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I would say you’re probably very right about that. Well, well let’s not tarry, shall we? [laughter] I’ve got some reading to do. Some more.

[laughter]

SARAH POCKET : Get off of whatever you’re on, on your computer.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Alright, well, with that directive, I must. So, again, thank you Sarah for coming on for coming on and taking the afternoon to spend with us, and I’m sure we’ll have you on again in the future. But until then, have a fabulous rest of your weekend.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for joining us. Tremendous thanks to Sarah aka HaughtPocket for joining us to chat about her Unorthodox Soulmates Series! Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; HayWire and Beyond the Gates by David Fenn; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

            If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

            Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast


	26. Plot? What Plot?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get a little spicy on this week's episode as DW and Delayne explore the provocative world of "porn without plot" fanfiction. They share a few of their faves and then have a lovely chat with author Baggerheda while they try to cool off!

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/plot-what-plot)

 

Read the fics!

 

####  [run, my heart beat faster](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13340667) by [tigerlo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigerlo/pseuds/tigerlo)

####  [waverly earp, life ruiner](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11916075) by [almostafantasia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/almostafantasia/pseuds/almostafantasia)

####  [Sunrise](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11151699) by [RaeDMagdon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaeDMagdon/pseuds/RaeDMagdon)

####  [Never Stop (WayHaught)](https://archiveofourown.org/series/855544) by [BaggerHeda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BaggerHeda/pseuds/BaggerHeda)

 

Episode artwork by: [Chantal Zeegers](http://youareavision.tumblr.com/)

 

 

 

Baggerheda's Desert Island Fic: [The Secret Histories](http://xenafiction.net/scrolls/vivian_darkbloom_tsh1.html) by Vivian Darkbloom (Xena Fic)

 

Transcript for the Deaf and hoh by Flying Fanatic!

 

EFA Episode 26 - Plot What Plot

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And this week we are feeling saucy.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I say when I talked to your earlier you were panting and sweating, right? That seemed appropriate.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, but that’s because I was walking up like a almost forty-five degree hill, okay. Don’t put thoughts that we don’t want in our listeners minds. That’s what the authors of this episode are trying to do, only it’s thoughts that they do want.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have re-read any of these at work, but, y'know, whatever. Been an interesting day.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Yes. So this episode, dear listeners, this episode if you haven’t guessed yet we are diving into the spicy section of the Wayhaught and – well, really it is just Wayhaught – fanfic. [laughter] I mean, of course there are spicy fics for other pairings out there, but us being us, naturally we gravitated to the Wayhaught pairing.

DELAYNE : Naturally.

DARKWICCAN : And in this case not just spicy, but quickies, too. [Delayne laughs] Because this episode, we’re talking about Plot? What Plot? PWP fics, also known as Porn Without Plot.

DELAYNE : Or a word I like to use is smut. Good, old-fashioned smut.

DARKWICCAN : Good old fashioned smut. Although sometimes there’s some fluff involved, and as our friend Laragh would like to say: smuff.

DELAYNE : And honestly when it comes to OTPs, especially canon OTPs, that’s what we’re here for, we’re – I am here for the fluffy smut, that is what I am here for.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah.

DELAYNE : That is why – isn’t that – I think that’s pretty much why I found fanfiction, and started to read it voraciously when I was first [laughter] coming to terms with my sexuality. Y'know, it’s some good stuff.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it is some good “smuff”. Ha ha. Bringing it back around. [laughter] So this week we have not one, not two, not even four, but really eight fics that we’re gonna talk about, but four them, to be fair, are part of a single series. So they’ll be kind of all mushed together. But yeah, so we’ve got a lot of ground to cover, so –

DELAYNE : Sorry, you mathed wrong, it technically makes seven.

DARKWICCAN : Seven?

DELAYNE : Yes, ‘cause one is four.

DARKWICCAN : Listen. [laughter] I take after Emily Andras, our patron saint, in that I don’t math well. I don’t math well.

DELAYNE : I generally – the only reason I seem to math well, is when you don’t.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : You’re my backup math-ulater.

DELAYNE : Back up math-ulater?

DARKWICCAN : Well, better than math-turbater, right?

[laughter]

DELAYNE : That one sound a little more appropriate for this episode.

DARKWICCAN : It kinda does, doesn’t it, doesn’t it? Okay. Alright, enough of this joking around. [laughter] Let’s get serious for a second here, and talk about some smut.

DELAYNE : Serious business.

DARKWICCAN : It is serious business. So I’m gonna start us off, since you’re all giggly over there.

DELAYNE : [giggling] Sorry.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Alright, so the first fic we’re gonna talk about today is my first selection, which is by an author familiar to friends of the podcast, and that is Rae D Magdon, and her work ‘Sunrise’. Which was based on a Kat Barrell prompt, or Kat _Ba_ rrell prompt, where she said, and I believe this was at a panel, she said, “I think Nicole would want to do something adventurous, and outdoorsy. Have you ever seen pics of a hotel where the rooms are little glass pods on the side of a mountain? I swear it’s real, you can look it up. She’d take Waverly there, and wake up with the sunrise and the sky”. Awwww.

DELAYNE : [laughter] That does sound very romantic.

DARKWICCAN : It does sound very romantic, and – [laughter] and this is a very sweet, very romantic little one-shot. Again, all of these are one-shots, even the series is made up of one-shots. So, it’s only a little over sixteen hundred words, so it’s very, very short, and it is as advertised. [coughs]

DELAYNE : Explicitly rated?

DARKWICCAN : It is explicitly rated, our two lovely ladies wake up in one of these glass pod hotel rooms, and make love against the backdrop of the sunrise.

DELAYNE : Appropriate title. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : That’s it, that’s the fic.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I know this one is not tagged as PWP. Not everyone know the tag, or necessarily what it means, but that is pretty much – yeah. They are… [dissolves in giggles]

DARKWICCAN : Okay, well let me help you along, my dear friend. So, yeah, there are y'know writers who may not be familiar, or prefer not to use the terminology PWP, Porn Without Plot, or even use the term smut, but I think when you can look at a rating, and see that it’s rated explicit, has fewer than say three thousand words, it’s most likely going to Porn Without Plot, because there’s not a whole lot of time to build up and resolve a plot in that span of time. Not to say that it’s not been done, and can’t be done, but what plot there is very much just geared towards getting the two characters together, and not much else.

DELAYNE : Yep.

DARKWICCAN : But that doesn’t mean it’s not lovely. And this piece is really, truly lovely. It’s very lovely, and very sweet. And Rae, of course, this is what she does. She only writes explicit fics with very, very few, if any exceptions, and none that are popping into my mind at the moment. So this her wheelhouse, and you can tell she’s very comfortable, she’s in the groove, and it’s a very lovely, very sweet, kind of sleepy sex scene, and yeah. It’s just nice, it’s very pretty. Again, it’s set against the backdrop of the sun - sunrise, so it’s just –

DELAYNE : Agreed.

DARKWICCAN : And really I don’t know that I can say much more about it than that.

DELAYNE : Yeah. Maybe it’s good we have so many, because really – actually, what you said when you were describing PWP. My next pick –

DARKWICCAN : Or your first one.

DELAYNE : Yeah, the next – yes, shit. What it with me today?

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] You’re all flustered.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I even had a salad today, so clearly it’s not the salad, as it was last time, when I had my shit together, and you’re like, “Keep eating salads”. [laughter] Yeah, sorry. So my first pick, of course, has to be the exception to the description that you just gave.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : It is quite long for a one-shot, yeah.

DELAYNE : It is three chapters, fifteen thousand words, it is 'Waverly Earp, Life Ruiner' by almostafantasia. And there’s a little bit more plot to this, but it is pretty much – most of the plot is Nicole being relentlessly teased.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Yes.

DELAYNE : [laughter] She’s had a long couple of days, there was some Wynonnus Interruptus that Waverly got hers, but Wynonna came in the middle to interrupt, so Nicole did not get hers. And, yeah.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : So yes, it’s about giving and receiving. [laughter] And in fairness, almostafantasia does tag this story as smut, and PWP, so they’re saying, “Listen. This is not – there’s some plot here, but it’s not a lot of plot”. It’s really, just as you said [Delayne laughs] trying to get the two of them together, and then giving Nicole a really hard time. Bum-dum-bum.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Yeah, I chose this ‘cause I think it was one of the first ones that I had read, and I noticed that the – in my history the count, how many times I’ve read it was a little – rather high. [laughter] So that’s a good one to re-read.

DARKWICCAN : It’s a good one. It - [laughter]

DELAYNE : Ya’ll are learning way too much about me than you probably need to know.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. We won’t talk about what I learned about you earlier. [laughter] But you should on Twitter.

DELAYNE : Wait, what?

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] About – okay, whoa, this is not – we’re not talking about this, ‘cause it’ll end up in bonus track, and we just don’t need that. We’ll talk about this offline.

DELAYNE : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : Okay. But yeah, no, this is a fun piece, Delayne’s pick here. It’s – despite that it is spread across three chapters, it’s actually fairly fast-paced and quick-moving. It’s very funny –

DELAYNE : It is, I think that’s why –

DARKWICCAN : It is very funny. And poor Nicole kind of being left with blue vulva, constantly, [Delayne laughs] is a, y'know. I dunno, there’s an element of schadenfreude involved, a little bit, I don’t know, maybe. But yeah, it’s an enjoyable little romp.

DELAYNE : [laughter] You’re just so funny with all your words today.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, my words are funny words.

DELAYNE : Or it’s just been a long day, I dunno.

DARKWICCAN : Probably both. I’ll probably listen back to this and go, “Oy vey”. [laughter] Was there anything you wanted to add? Anything in particular stand out for you about this piece that you picked, Delayne?

DELAYNE : [laughter] Only things that – I can’t provide way too much more information.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] I will say that this fic does not pull any punches as far as what it is about. The description for chapter one, the tagline summary is a quote from the story, and it is very much like – well, I’m just gonna say it’s in you face. [Delayne laughs] Faces are involved. [Delayne laughs] And it definitely doesn’t hold back, so.

DELAYNE : Oh, I’m dying.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Will you recover in time for us to talk about the next story?

DELAYNE : Hopefully. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : This one I think we can take a little more time one.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : So this next pick is my second pick, second and final fic pick for today’s episode, and it’s by the illustrious, and prolific, and very lyrical author, tigerlo. And it’s the fic 'run, my heart beat faster'. And this is a fic that really can be paired with an earlier fic or hers that sort of discusses the same thing, but from a different angle, called ‘we arc cleaner than lightning’. It’s actually a two-parter series called ‘your body is a gift’. But this fic, ‘run, my heart beat faster’ is not part of that series, it’s separate, but could very comfortably be paired. But it is – well, it’s a very emontional – well, all of tigerlo’s work has a very strong emotional ingredient to it.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : And that is absolutely true here. And so if you’re familiar with ‘your body is a gift’, which has the story ‘we arc clearer than lightning’ in it, it is – well, tigerlo herself calls the “wayhaught strap-on epic”. [Delayne laughs] And in that story Nicole is in the driver’s seat, so to speak.

DELAYNE : I swear I’m like a twelve-year-old today, I’m just going to be giggling over her.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, fair enough. I will work with that in editing. I will work with that in the editing process. But this is - ‘run, my heart beat faster’ – is Waverly being curious about being in that position, and – with Nicole – and it’s really a conversation. I think all of tigerlo’s pieces are very much conversational, but this is truly a conversation. And it is so lovely, and we learn things about Nicole that, I think, in this aspect, in this sort of my – not necessarily my headcanon, but I think maybe for quite a few reader’s headcanons, it fits. Y'know, we learn about Nicole’s past history, and intimate history, and things she had done, and things she has not done. Well, do I wanna give away the game here?

DELAYNE : [laughter] No, I think that people should go read it, but they’re probably not gonna be –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : - surprised with what you’ve already said, they might have sussed it out already.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, well, but – essentially we learn about, y'know, things that Nicole has and hasn’t done in the past, and she’s absolutely willing to let Waverly give this a try, if it’s what she wants to do, because they’re both so very open with each other, and trusting with each other. And that’s something that really comes through in the text here, is just how trusting Nicole is of Waverly, and vice versa. And there’s a lot of discussions about consent, and checking in, and while also remaining, y'know, in the moment. And it’s tigerlo, man, it’s just gorgeous. It’s just absolutely, totally gorgeous. I do recall that there are a few people who were a little frustrated with the amount of consent talk in the story, and I personally think it is just right. I think it’s just the right the amount of consent, because, honestly, if I were in a similar position, I would also be constantly checking in, and making sure, and –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - needing that reassurance that, y'know, the direction I’m going is good, and that my partner is comfortable, and that my partner, y'know, knows that I’m, y'know, checks in with me, am I okay. I think that it is just the right amount. I don’t think it’s too much at all. Yeah. It’s just –

DELAYNE : I hadn’t seen that in the comments, that’s unfortunate. Yeah, I think – I don’t wanna say with – well, it’s not new between them, but at the same time, it’s y'know different, and especially if you’re trying something new, then it’s –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s – the concept isn’t new, the approach is, and so, yeah, definitely there’s gotta be lots of check-ins. There just has to. And honestly, for me, I think that makes it even more intimate.

DELAYNE : Oh, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. SO I think, y'know, maybe for some readers it was like, “Okay, okay –“

DELAYNE : “We get it. Get to it”.

DARKWICCAN :”- she said yes, she said she’s fine, we get it”. But I’m like, nope.

DELAYNE : But that’s why we love, I mean, I think, y'know, when I was a guest on another podcast I mentioned about how I prefer canon OTP pairings?

DELAYNE : Mhm.

DELAYNE : Because the intimacy between them is such more palpable, and then I think it really comes out in the fic so much more, and that’s the part that I enjoy. Sure, I enjoy the sex scenes, but there’s something about sex scenes written with such intimacy, is really what it’s all about.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely, a thousand percent. I think that’s why a lot of people read fanfic. I think that’s why I read fanfic, because you do have this opportunity to take these established characters and really dig deep. I mean, fanfic is about expanding on the characters that we already know, or digging in deeper, right?

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : And – but, yeah, no, I agree with you a thousand percent, and I think that tigerlo absolutely, absolutely accomplishes that. Again, as I talked earlier about what Rae, being in her wheelhouse? This is tiger in her wheelhouse –

DELAYNE : Oh, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - totally in the pocket, completely comfortable, a thousand percent. And that’s always really enjoyable, regardless of why you’re going in to read a fic. But, yeah, I think that’s a good covering of our dear tigerlo, and I believe that you know have the – the –

DELAYNE : Series that we were –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, you got the series, yeah.

DELAYNE : So speaking of authors who have wheelhouses…

DARKWICCAN : Yes! [laughter]

DELAYNE : Is it BaggerHeda? Heda? Did we ever figure that out?

DARKWICCAN : BaggerHeda.

DELAYNE : BaggerHeda.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : So BaggerHeda, who most of us on Twitter just refer to as ‘Boo’, is – this is – explicit fics is her wheelhouse as well. And I remember when ‘Never Stop’ first appeared, because I think, let’s see, let’s look at the date when it was published… yeah, I was definitely reading fic by then, and been following her ever since, and ‘Never Stop’ was, I think, yeah, the first one I ever saw under her name.

DARKWICCAN : So, so let’s clarify. So the name of the series is ‘Never Stop (Wayhaught)’.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : And the first piece of the series is ‘Never Stop’.

DELAYNE : Yes. Thank you. And then more were added, it became a series, and then lots more PWP fics appeared, and many, many more PWP fics appeared, and –

DARKWICCAN : So BaggerHeda, she doesn’t just limit herself to writing PWP within this series, right. This series is just made up currently of the four pieces that we’re gonna chat about briefly, but she does also have a catalogue of work –

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - for Wayhaught that’s PWP that is not related to this particular series.

DELAYNE : Correct, yes, a very large library. But, yeah, so we start with ‘Never Stop’. And the way Boo uses language, I just – it is amazing. I don’t have the words to say how good the words are.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well it’s very poetic, it’s borderline lyrical. I will say it’s not as lyrical as tigerlo, but it is her own voice, it’s BaggerHeda’s own voice, of course. It does have a melodious quality to it, a very melodic. And each of these pieces, all of the summaries all start with a similar sort of sentence, kind of going back and forth between Nicole and Waverly. And that is, each of the pieces starts off with something like this: “This, Waverly thinks, is what it must be like to swim in the endless ocean.” Or for Nicole it’s, “This, Nicole thinks, must be magic.” And so on. So that’s how you know that it’s a ‘Never Stop’ piece, if you’re reading the y'know opening paragraph, or you’re reading the summary, and that’s how the summary starts, you know that you’re definitely reading a ‘Never Stop’ piece.

DELAYNE : Yes, and then she uses similar language, at least within the first two, where we sort of bring it back, and the scene from earlier, at least for the first two is “It hadn’t always been this, way, not in the beginning”. So the current scene that is in the fic, y'know, is they’ve been together a while, they’re more comfortable with each other, and when we have this little flashback, we talk about maybe how things didn’t go as smoothly.

DARKWICCAN : So you’re talking about the very first piece, ‘Never Stop’, right?

DELAYNE : Yes. So right now we are specifically talking about ‘Never Stop’. And the same sort of language is used for the second one as well, where we flashback into how they were when they first got together, when things were new, and different. Especially for Waverly, and how they’ve changed and grown to be into the comfortable, intimate spot that they are in the current, active part of the fic.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yeah. We – in both of them we do get that sort of how it was before, and how it now, set piece. So that actually that gives us – yeah, it shows the growth of the characters, with themselves, internally and also externally, and with each other, and how their relationship has evolved, and grown, and matured, and yeah. So that’s how ‘Never Stop’ and ‘Always, From The Start’ kind of are similar. Let’s talk about ‘Like [a] Flame’.

DELAYNE : Okay. So the first two are definitely sort of very sweet. So when we get to number three, we –

DARKWICCAN : Mhm.

DELAYNE : [laughter] It doesn’t get any less sweet, but it gets a little, well…

DARKWICCAN : Rough.

DELAYNE : Rough. Which is in the tags –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, mhm.

DELAYNE : - and “up against the wall”. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Uh-huh. [laughter] Yeah, it’s another side to their relationship. So I think that with this piece, ‘Like [a] Flame’, that is a lot more intense and a lot more rough, and a bit more – less about making love, and more about just having sex, really kind of intense, oh-god-I-have-to-have-you-right-now kind of sex, that BaggerHeda is showing us a different tool in her toolbox, which is a terrible, terrible analogy to make. [Delayne laughs] But you get what I’m saying. It’s – you’ve got this scenario where, yeah, we’re seeing that this couple that can be very soft, and sweet, and sensual with each other, can also be very rough and intense.

DELAYNE : Passionate.

DARKWICCAN : And it’s still them, it’s – yeah – it’s still, exactly, it’s still them, it’s still them, it doesn’t pull away from who they are to each other, and how they behave, or anything like that, it’s just another facet of their relationship, and it’s BaggerHeda showing, y'know, I can write this style of smut as well, so here you go. Here’s another piece of the pie, so to speak.

DELAYNE : [laughter] It’s not just BaggerHeda showing off, too, it’s shows that relationships aren’t – especially the intimate part of a couple’s relationship – shouldn’t be static, either.

DARKWICCAN : Right, yeah, you don’t want it to get stuck in a rut. [Delayne laughs] That’s another type of fiction.

DELAYNE : [laughter] That took me a moment.

DARKWICCAN : But yeah you don’t wanna get stuck in a routine, right, that’s no fun, that’s not keeping things spicy and interesting for you and your partner. So yeah, this is an example of them doing a little, y'know, exploring of a, y'know, what if we come at this this way, instead, kind of situation.

DELAYNE : And – is this the one that has one of my favorite lines?

DARKWICCAN : I don’t know, what’s your favorite line?

DELAYNE : “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I told you someday you would fuck me with your boots on”. [laughter] Which is a callback to – was it the first one? Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, man, I’m not sure. Possibly. Not without opening it up and doing a work search for “boots”. [laughter]

DELAYNE : Control F…Boots. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, pretty much.

DELAYNE : Brace for word count. Number two…control F, “Boots”. What do you mean phrase not found? You son of a bitch.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Having a fight with the search. But regardless, it could be a call-back to a completely unrelated fic that BaggerHeda wrote. She’s written a lot, a lot, a lot. A lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. And there’s still one more story in this series, and it’s actually a story that we talked about a while ago when we were doing our ‘Six Short Shorts’ episode, way back at the beginning of the season. How crazy is that? Oh my gosh.

DELAYNE : Is this our first repeat?

DARKWICCAN : It is, it is, yeah. And so as a result I don’t wanna dig into it too deeply, suffice it to say that it was one of my picks for that episode, and I adore this story. It’s just so, I don’t know, it’s just, it’s got a very out of body sort of –

DELAYNE : Ethereal was the word you used back in that episode.

DARKWICCAN : Ethereal was what I said before, yeah, yeah. It’s about Nicole y'know thinking back on her rock climbing days, and being in nature, and how that has, y'know, affected her as a person, and also as a lover, and it’s just, it’s just a lovely piece. It’s just – again, I just really love lovely. Like, that’s my thing, I think, when it comes to this kind of stuff. So, yeah. Was there anything you wanted to ‘Like The Bones Of The Earth’?

DELAYNE : I just love all of them so much. [laughter] All of them.

DARKWICCAN : Do you have a favorite of the series?

DELAYNE : Oh, man. [laughter] I think it’s the first one, because that was –

DARKWICCAN : OH, yeah, ‘Never Stop’, yeah.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I think ‘Never Stop’, if – my favorite one is whichever one I’m currently reading at that moment.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : That’s kind of me too, actually. That’s me, too, with a lot of fics. But, yeah. So yeah, so those – so, as usual, because, as is typical for us, when we are talking about a bunch of different fics by a bunch of different authors, we save the author that we are interviewing for last, and that’s the case here. We got to talk to Boo at ClexaCon, and then I recently was down in L.A., and got to hang out with her a bit there, and convinced her to come on the show. And she’ll be talking with us for the second segment today, which is very exciting.

DELAYNE : Yay!

DARKWICCAN : Yay! But before we do that, we’ve got a little bit of housekeeping to do. First of all, you may have noticed I mentioned a moment ago that we were talking about fic that we had already talked about earlier in “the season”. Yeah, that’s right, we have decided to break this up into seasons, and we are at episode twenty-six now. Delayne and I did a quick chat, and decided that we would do thirty episodes per season, so we are coming up on the end of season one of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , and what a wild ride it has been. It has been amazing.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Wild ride, that seems also appropriate for today’s topic.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, absolutely. Yes. So, yeah, so we’ll be coming up to our final episode of the season about four weeks from now, and that will be the episode where we present the winner of the EFA Fic Challenge. And we’ll do that as a little audiobook for the first segment, and then for the second segment we’ll interview the winning author, I’m so very, very excited about that. So, yeah, we don’t know who that’s gonna be yet, right now we’re in the final round, which is ‘Necromancy for Beginners’ by sensitivepigeon versus ‘Sunday Morning, Rain is Falling’ by maidenstar. By the time you hear this it’ll be well over, so I won’t encourage you to vote. [laughter] But I am excited to see who that’s gonna be, I’m excited to record a little fun audiobook for you guys, and interview the winner, whomever it’s gonna be. So that’ll be great. [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : The Stripper by David Rose

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody and welcome back to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me, as always, is the lovely –

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we our fanning ourselves and trying to cool off a little bit after our first segment. [Delayne laughs] Trying to be a little bit more under control and presentable, because we have with us the fantastic, the amazing, the very spicy author of the series we discussed before the break: BaggerHeda. And what would you like us to call you today?

BOO : Oh, please, call me Boo.

DARKWICCAN : Call you Boo, alright, so we have BaggerHeda, aka Boo. Boo, welcome to the show.

BOO : Thank you very much.

DARKWICCAN : You’re very welcome. Thank you for agreeing to come on.

DELAYNE : Especially for such an explicit subject.

BOO : Well, you know that I’m not gonna be shy about talking about this sort of thing, [laughter] and at some point you will get my “why Plot What Plot fiction is important”. So I can do that now, or you can wait for later. What’s your option?

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well why don’t we see if we kind of  get into that out of our first kind of softball question.

DELAYNE : We want it to happen organically.

BOO : [laughter] Go for it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, exactly. We’ll let things kind of warm up, get a little steamy, [Delayne laughs] see what percolates to the top. So how did you get into fanfiction? And I ask this first because I know you’ve got quite the story.

BOO : I go back a ways, and this is – I’m a little bit older than most people in the fandom by a good bit, and my fan piece actually go back to before the internet. I was fairly involved in the Darkover series of novels by Marion Zimmer Bradley. I never did get published in the anthologies, but I did write stuff for it. And this is how we did it –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, wow.

BOO : - back before the internet existed. And then in the early days of the internet, in the nineties, I was very active reading in the _Xena_ universe, but I wrote some for _X-Files_ , and I also wrote for some highly moderated, highly private kink boards, so this is sort of my history in fanfiction. Got away from it for a couple of decades, and it’s only since _Wynonna Earp_ came along that I decided to try my hand at writing again. And it’s been quite an interesting ride. I’ve been writing for about a year now, I think.

DELAYNE : Well, welcome back to writing, and thank you.

DARKWICCAN : Now, kind of bringing it back around a little bit. You mentioned earlier that you have kind of a thesis, or a mission statement, on why Plot What Plot, or Porn Without Plot stories are important, and –

BOO : Let’s just call them smut.

DELAYNE : Yes! Smut is my favorite word, actually. I really like the word smut.

BOO : Yes.

DELAYNE : I think it is an excellent word.

BOO : And flat out, I write smutty stories, and I really like writing smutty stories, and that’s why I keep doing it. But I never set out to be a smut writer in the _Wynonna_ fanfic universe. It just sorta happened.

DARKWICCAN : The thirst is real. [Delayne laughs]

BOO : I guess, y'know. And, y'know, maybe somebody who doesn’t know me I think I’m like some weird dirty old lady who’s always talking about this stuff, which, y'know, [Delayne laughs] kind of isn’t the case, I’m much more likely to be talking about sports, y'know, when we go out for brunch, so. [howling laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Sorry.

BOO : It just, you don’t know, somehow this has become my niche. But it’s one of these things when I start reading in a new fandom, the x-rated stories are always the ones I go for first, y'know. And I’m, I mean, maybe it’s like I’m some lesbian stereotype of some sort, but, y'know, visual porn, and movies, and that sort of ilk, that just doesn’t do it for me at all. But I like the stories, so, y'know, that’s sort of where I gravitate, especially when I’m like starting to read in a new fandom.

So when I found _Wynonna Earp_ I was one of these people that caught on – I knew about – I had heard about the show, but I hadn’t seen it yet, and I actually had heard something about the comics, back when they were still in on Image, before IDW got the rights to them. I heard about – I think this was like mid-nineties, or something, ’05, ’96, a couple had been published, and I was collecting comics back then, especially independent comics, which is, man, I wish I could go back in time and get those original issues. But I didn’t get them, and y'know, man – anyway.

So _Wynonna Earp_ , I had heard about the show and also on Tumblr it’s like, oh what’s all this gay shit popping up. [laughter] Oh, look, this show just dropped on Netflix, and I binged it in like a week. And it wasn’t until we had started season two that these characters, especially Wayhaught, but all of the cast, had just been sort of percolating around in my mind so much, it’s like I’m not really sure what caused it, but it’s like, I have to write again.

And the thing that came out was the first story that I wrote, as a Plot What Plot story, y'know, and that’s the one called ‘Never Stop’, it’s the first. It was never intended to be a series, it was intended to be a one-off, and it was gonna be the one thing that I wrote, and be done. [laughter] I just wanted the username on AO3 so I could kudos things, and leave an occasional comment, and I thought, oh, I’ll write one story. Well, now I’m like…

DARKWICCAN : Okay, okay, hang on, I gotta stop you there, I gotta stop you there, because come on, you’ve been in this game before. You know when it comes to fanfic they’re like chips. [Delayne laughs] You can’t just have one.

BOO : I had forgotten that fact.

DARKWICCAN : Okay.

[laughter]

BOO : I’m telling the truth, I really meant –

DELAYNE : Conveniently forgotten.

BOO : - I thought I was just gonna publish one, so it better be damn good. So I put a lot into that story, and out of that series I love that one the most because it’s trying to capture that like really beautiful, floaty, y'know, and casting Waverly in that role, as just being like so sexed up head that nothing makes sense, and it doesn’t matter. And that was my one-shot… and then I wrote another, and I then wrote another.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Let’s talk about the fics in the ‘Never Stop’ series here. Your work just overall, in this series, and in general, but really it feels like in this series, has a very kind of melodious sort of quality. Not necessarily lyrical, but very melodic. Do you draw inspiration from music? And if you do, what were you listening to when you were writing these four stories?

BOO : Actually, no, I do not listen to music when I write this sort of thing, or any of my creative writing stuff, which is weird because when I write software I do. But not for – it just doesn’t work for my process. For me writing is an iterative thing, in that I will go over a paragraph, I will go over a single phrase again, and again, and again. I constantly edit, re-write, re-arrange, y'know, say okay this one word I need to replace it, but I don’t know what. It’s a very slow going, for me, writing. And so music wouldn’t work with that, for me. I’m glad that you say that, because that’s what I’m trying to achieve, that sort of flow and that sort of effortless glide through the ideas that the sentences are expressing.

But I have one exception to that, there was one thing I was listening to, if you know Melissa Ferrick’s _Drive_? Which is – yeah, okay, so we’re talking lesbian porno soundtrack here. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well, when you’re right, you’re right.

BOO : This is how lesbians get pregnant. [laughter] Right?

DARKWICCAN : If only it was that easy, come one.

BOO : So I think there’s a reference to something about drive in that first story, the ‘Never Stop’ story, because I actually was listening to that one thing on loop during part of writing that. But that thing didn’t come out – none of my stories ever come out in one big chunk, they’re written small bits at a time, and then endlessly revised until I’m happy with them. That’s why I don’t publish all that often, I have a lot of respect for authors who can like churn out good stuff quickly. It’s like how do you do that? It’s just not in my skill set.

DELAYNE : Oh, you’re way more prolific than I am, so I’m impressed with your slow pace. [laughter]

BOO : Well, you know, for some, but I mean it’s, y'know, plus we also have other things going on in our life, and it’s –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, life, how annoying.

BOO : Right? I’m a few years to retirement, but, y'know, we’re down in single digits now.

DARKWICCAN : Well that’s exciting though.

BOO : Oh, boy.

DELAYNE : So we can look forward to lots more, is that what you’re saying?

BOO : I’m hoping. I am hoping.

DELAYNE : Yeah, so you mentioned that ‘Never Stop’ was your first one, so we know that, now.

BOO : Right.

DELAYNE : And you have definitely wrote many smut fics. This group of four, in developing this series, what is the common theme other than the smut aspect?

BOO : It’s actually – I’m gonna go a little geeky on you here – it’s me playing with language in a very specific way. Those four, the reasons they’re in a group together is because they’re all written in present tense, they’re the only fics that I have that are written in present tense, and most of them have, they start in the present tense, they have a small interlude in the middle which goes into the past tense, and then returns to present. So that’s nerdy point one.

Thing that’s going on with those four is they all share similar language, they all have common sentence structures you see, that the first phrase in each of those is the same. The first line is always the same: “This, Waverly thinks, is blah, blah, blah”; “This, Nicole thinks, is blah, blah, blah”. So they all begin that way, and especially the first two also have shared sentences in them. So it’s just me playing with words, because I am really a language nerd, and I think words are the best toys ever. Y'know, it’s one of the reasons why I’m a fanfic writer, amongst all these other things, is I just love playing with them, they’re better than Lego, y'know? It’s –

DARKWICCAN : I think Shakespeare would agree with you there.

BOO : Y'know, words are the bomb, it’s been a lot of fun. The reason I keep writing, I mean, ‘cause, y'know, you know how well paid are all for the writing.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yes.

[Delayne laughs]

BOO : So my compensation is the joy that I get in being able to construct these things, so I just have a good time doing it.

DELAYNE : When you’re mentioning similar language, yes, the first two with the interlude was, “It hadn’t always been this way”. That and the beginning, and I just love that line.

DARKWICCAN : And I have to say you actually used one of my favorite words - just in life – you used one of my favorite words -

BOO : And which is that?

DARKWICCAN : - in one of these stories. Susurrus.

BOO : It’s a word we get to use so infrequently.

DARKWICCAN : Right? And it’s such a fantastic onomatopoeia, I am such a fan of onomatopoeic words. So yeah, when I saw that word I was like [gasp] she used susurrus.

BOO : Y'know, I think it’s – now I can’t use it again, because it’s such an uncommon word, but it’s also one of my favorites, I’ll find a way to work it in.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : So how do the characters on the show – how they’re portrayed – how does that inform how you see them behaving intimately with one another?

BOO : I have actually thought about this quite a bit. Y'know, as a smut writer it’s kind of a privileged position that I get to play in an area that the show will never, ever, ever be able to, y'know confirm or deny. So in a lot of ways, even though I want to stick to canon as much as possible, I’m always going to be extra canon, because the camera will always pan away after, y'know, there’s a kissing scene, thank god. [Delayne laughs] But then we never see what happens next, and we never will, because it’s not that kind of show, and we don’t want it to be.

So as far as the characters intimately, all you have to go on is what their behavior is in all other parts of their lives. Because their intimate behavior won’t be any different from that, right? That’s how it works. So basically I just take the canon characteristics of all the characters and extend them. And I think that’s, y'know, what all the good smut writers will do, at least that’s what I’m trying to do. The most critical – no, that’s not the word I want.

DELAYNE : [laughter] No, I love it, ‘cause you said that’s how you write, is you really – word choice is important to you, so even when you speak you’re like, “no, wait, I need the right word first”.

BOO : I’m really – I’m trying to be really conscious, but I’m thinking about, y'know what is the basic characteristic of character like Waverly, we think that y'know she’s bold and she’s brilliant, but most importantly, in my mind, is she is curious. And you see that that’s a thing I hit on over and over again, is Waverly’s curiosity, It’s her basic trait, and it works super well in the environment that I right in, very often, because it leads to that very delightful trope of, oh, Waverly learned something new. [Delayne laughs] And y'know, in a sexual situation, or any other, y'know?

So that’s a thing that’s like really common, especially in like you’re Wayhaught first time fics, is Waverly knows what she wants, but she doesn’t know what that is yet. And it’s all about discovery. I think I wrote one of my one-shots, not one of the ones in the series here, but that was the entire thing was okay, Waverly’s curious. Because in the title, too, it’s – what did I call that one? – ‘In Every Way Curious’. And that’s actually – it was a really fun write, for that, so it was like, okay, what does Waverly learn?

Same thing for Nicole, y'know, we think about her qualities are ones of steadfastness and loyalty, but the number one in my mind is Nicole is patient. We saw her in the entire first season sitting there waiting, waiting for Waverly to figure it out, and always letting Waverly set the pace, because Nicole is patient. So that comes up over and over again in pretty much everything I write.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and Emily herself even said that Nicole let’s Waverly drive the sexy bus. [Delayne laughs]

BOO : Uh-huh, a very good quote. Y'know, Nicole’s all for it, but she’s not pushing. She’ll never push Waverly. She never will.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

BOO : We are all in agreement.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Motion passes.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Sorry, y'know, you were looking for the title, and here I am scrolling through all of your works here, which actually is a good Segway. You definitely, you have a lot of works so I’m curious, at least not necessarily in the series, the group of four, but all of your smut fics: which one is your favorite?

BOO : My personal favorite? This is one of those questions where if you ask me tomorrow I’ll probably give you a different answer. Because all of them have like at least one little thing in them that I love, but for right now I might have to say the one where they go out for dinner and desert. It’s called ‘You Are All The Sweet I Need’, and the reason I’m right now, is because I had so much fun writing that.

I think I was talking a little bit about constructing the building blocks of the story, and how I put them together. That one was like a real construction project, and I was trying to think of all the things that needed to happen in order to get them into the situation I want. I mean, it’s a Plot What Plot, y'know, there’s no advancing of the whole Earp storyline in any of these things, but for that one to work there had to be certain things happening in the parking lot, and there had to be certain things happening at dinner, and there had to be a whole set up in order for what I wanted to happen, which was the semi-public sex scene.

Because Nicole is a cop, she’s never going to risk being arrested on like a public indecency charge, y'know? [laughter] So, y'know, if she‘s gonna to get on with her girlfriend, she’s gotta make sure she’s not gonna get caught, so it’s – and all these things go into me making up these stories. I can’t just have like a sort of random y'know sex scene without any base to it. There’s got to be at least some context, right?

So I had like a little bit of scrap paper, and I had that parking lot drawn out, trying to figure out, well, there’s a dividing wall here, so she feels safe, and y'know there was a whole fricking diagram to make that story work. And I had a blast doing it, it was a lot of fun.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : I don’t know what you’re talking about. DW’s never sent me a map before of an apartment, or anything like that.

BOO : Right.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yes, yes, I’m guilty, I am also guilty of coming up with –

BOO : Sometimes you just gotta figure out how this is gonna work, right? Oh and then the other thing was I had to come up with the stupid details about the restaurant. There was a whole list, like a list of twelve on what the name of the restaurant was going to be. Now the final, the one that ended up in the story, it’s The Mountainview, because I needed it to be pretentious, kind of like a pretentious asshole place, right?

And with the waiter named Gerard, and all these things were just like laboriously like, well, what if name it this, what if I name it this. And I was DMing back and forth with deathrae, y'know, the author of the ‘Wolves’ thing, and should I name the restaurant this, should I name the restaurant this, and I was on a delay at an airport trying to fly to Houston, and the plane had broken down. So I had six hours waiting in the Las Vegas airport – which has free wi-fi, of course – like, okay, I’m just gonna write this story, and that’s where a lot of that got written, actually. Crazy, huh?

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] That is so awesome. Well, we here on the show are a fan of your work, Boo, and we’ve actually talked about one of your fics before on this podcast, and that was part of our ‘Six Short Shorts’ episode, where we talked about – it was actually one of my picks, I have to say – ‘Like The Bones Of The Earth’.

BOO : I thank you for that, that was one of the first times that I felt like people were noticing what I was writing, so thank you.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, trust me, you are being noticed. [laughter] But the thing I love so much about that story, and I kind of waxed lyrical about in that episode, is that the imagery is so powerful and so strong, and it feels like it’s pulled from personal experience. So I have to ask - and I know the answer a little bit, but I don’t know the full answer – are you a outdoorsy type? Would you classify yourself as an outdoorsy type, and has this influenced your work in the past?

BOO : I’ll say yes, sort of. And no, it’s – yes I am fairly outdoorsy, not as much as I used to be, ‘cause now I’m old and fat. And with the wrecked knee from the sports injury I can’t hike like I used to, but I still like to go camping.

And the setting for that interlude in the story was Joshua Tree National Park, and that is one of my favorite places in the world, I’ve been there a million times. And that is very much from my own personal experience, what it’s like to be camped out in the middle of those rock fields, and these gigantic boulders, and when it’s a full moon they really do glow this really eerie white color, and you feel like you’re y'know on another planet, the landscape is just so different. And you feel like they’re surrounding you, and protecting you, in a very different way than any place else I’ve ever found.

And yeah, so part of that is from personal history, but it’s me being city girl, versus outdoorsy girl, versus whatever, I don’t think that’s really the thing that’s influencing my works. It’s more I think any author takes their ability to describe what they see, whether that’s an outdoor landscape or a crowded street, or a quiet room, y'know?

I could write a story that has, y'know, some sort of lyrical detail about the way the floorboards creak, which, y'know, somebody else might not react to in as strong a way. It’s part of being a good writer, I think, is finding your ability to take what’s around you and describe it in a way that it’s not just, y'know, fact, fact, fact, boring. You need to find that lyrical, and that pleasant flow of the words.

So I’m glad you liked that story, though, and if you’ve never been to Joshua Tree, you need to go, it’s a cool place.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I haven’t been to Joshua Tree, but I have been out to Red Rock Canyon, outside of Las Vegas, Nevada, and that was –

BOO : Right.

DARKWICCAN : - it’s a similar feeling, so it was reminding me a lot of that.

BOO : Y'know, that’s funny, because that’s another big rock-climbing place, and so I knew that that story was going to have rock climbing in it. I knew that Nicole’s memory of the rock climbing would lead to the thing that follows, which is Nicole trying to teach Waverly something, and then Waverly sort of accelerating and learning it, and, y'know, which is the thing that surprises Nicole.

So it was, okay, Joshua Tree, or Yosemite, or Red Rocks. It was gonna be one of those three, and the reason it’s not Yosemite - which is like my all-time favorite place to ever be - it’s always crowded in Yosemite, especially in the climbing camps. There’s never time for quiet reflection because it’s always rowdy there. And part of the story is like looing at the rocks, and looking at the moon, and again, with the patience, it’s the thing that teaches her patience, is to be in this quiet, otherworldly place. So that made Yosemite not viable for that. Red Rock, maybe.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I just – I just love that story so much, it’s genuinely one of my all-time favs. But, y'know, I just gotta thank you so much for everything. Thank you so much for coming on and chatting with us tonight, and thank you so much for what you’re writing. And I think you’re absolutely right, that writing smut fiction is a political act. But in the best possible way. Kind of like queer women doing stand-up is also a political act.

BOO : Anything can be political, we just need to do it with all our hearts, right?

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely.

DELAYNE : Well said.

DARKWICCAN : Well I am absolutely excited to see whatever you have to bring to the table next.

DELAYNE : [laughter] More brunch fics? Sorry.

BOO : [laughter] I have a couple of things in – well, they’re not in queue, they’re kind of simmering on the back burner right now, and like the hour before we got on this phone call it’s like, oh, crap, another idea. So trust me, they keep popping up. [Delayne laughs] Whenever I think I’m done. Y'know, when you write smut fics, it’s sort of definitionally you have to keep thinking of new stuff, because like having boring sex in a smut fic would just be the saddest thing ever. So – it’s bad enough in real life, y'know? [Delayne laughs] In fanfic, it’s gotta – you have to keep thinking of something new, so.

DARKWICCAN : You gotta think outside the box.

BOO : As it were. Wink, wink.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. [laughter] Well, Boo, thank you so much for coming on, this has been an absolute delight.

BOO : Well thank you for inviting me. I really appreciate it, and thank you for the work – it makes me really, really happy to know that there are people out there who read this stuff, and enjoy it as much as I do, and not in like sort of dirty old lady sort of way.

[Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, not in a weird way. But as you know, because I know that you do listen to the show, you know there’s one more question.

BOO : I do, I’m a regular listener.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, there is one more question coming your way that you cannot escape. So I’m gonna hand it back over to Delayne, to hit you with our one and only hard ball.

BOO : Go for it, Delayne.

DELAYNE : You are on a desert island, and can only have one fanfic to read. What is it?

BOO : Y'know, I am going to go outside of _Wynonna_ fandom for this.

DARKWICCAN : Sure.

BOO : As much as I – y'know – as much as I love the various _Earp_ things out there, and the various AUs that I adore, y'know, there’s Wolves, there’s Mars – but there’s an author by the pseudonym of Vivian Darkbloom, who wrote some of the most beautiful _Xena_ fics that I have ever read. Most specifically in the Mel and Janice category. So there’s a series, it’s called ‘The Secret Histories’, and it’s three parts. The first one is called ‘The Secret Histories’, the second is ‘Venezia’, and the third, the novel length one, is called ‘Coup de Grace’. And I’ll make sure I give you those links and stuff. But they are just some of the most beautiful writing that I’ve ever seen. The characters are Mel and Janice, which is sort of an AU that’s built into the _Xena_ verse. We only saw them in one episode, but everybody loves Mel and Janice. Janice is the _Indiana Jones_ metaphor, right?

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yes.

BOO : And if I can beg the indulgence of the desert island librarian, in addition to those three main parts [Delayne laughs] I would also ask for the prequel, which is called ‘All The Colors In The World’, and then the Valentine’s day comedy piece, which is called ‘Ignatz and Isolde’.

DARKWICCAN : So it is truly an entire series, okay. Well, fantastic.

BOO : Oh, and there’s more of that, those are the ones that I can’t live without. [Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : Okay.

BOO : But, again, the author’s name is Vivian Darkbloom. I don’t know what this author is doing nowadays, whether or not she’s still active. But also Vivian Darkbloom is an anagram of Vladimir Nabokov. That’s all I know.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, that’s – [laughter] that’s fantastic, we’ll be sure to provide a link to the series ‘The Secret Histories’ by Vivian Darkbloom for all of our listeners to check out some old-school _Xena_ fanfic. But yeah, unfortunately we’re out of time. I don’t want to be out of time, but we are, so I’m just gonna say thank you again so much for coming and talking with us, Boo, and everybody else, be sure to practice safe fanfic.

[Delayne laughs]

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for joining us. Tremendous thanks to Baggerheda aka Boo for joining us to talk about her 'Never Stop (Wayhaught)' Series. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Read'em and Weep by Ryan Ike; The Stripper by David Rose; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

            If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

            Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast


	27. Who's Your Mummy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week on the podcast DW and Delayne discover the dangers of reading ancient texts aloud whilst near dead things. Join them on this expedition of discovery as they discuss the Mummy AU 'throw all your hells towards the heavens'; and then sit down with author maidenstar to chat!

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](https://t.co/ROl8ReDa49)

 

Read the Fic!

'[throw all your hells towards the heavens](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13280580)' by maidenstar

 

Episode artwork by: [Chantal Zeegers](http://youareavision.tumblr.com/)

 

 

 

maidenstar's Desert Island Fic: [Too Much](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12179130) by brogurt

 

Transcription for the Deaf/HOH/APD by Flying Fanatic!

 

EFA Episode 27 - Who's Your Mummy

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me, as always, is the delightful and lovely -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And this week we are covered from head to toe in ace bandages.

DELAYNE : [laughter] My brother actually masking tapped his head once, so.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] How much hair did he have left afterwards?

DELAYNE : He had to shave it.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Well that’s what you get for doing a stupid thing.

DELAYNE : But he definitely looked like a mummy.

DARKWICCAN : I believe it. And thank you for the intro there, ‘cause yes we are, this week, talking about – at least my favorite – _Mummy_ AU. And, quite frankly, the only _Mummy_ AU in the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom that I’m aware of. But that’s okay ‘cause it is fantastic, and that is ‘throw all your hells towards the heavens’ by maidenstar. Don’t everybody stand up at once. [Delayne laughs] Keep your seats, it’s cool, I know this is exciting.

DELAYNE : It is ‘cause you know what? I really like that movie.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] That makes one of us.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I thought everyone loved that movie, what are you talking about?

DARKWICCAN : Well, I don’t remember much of it. I saw it when it first came out, and I saw it in the movie theatre, and honestly the only thing I remember from that movie is Brendan Fraser swinging on a rope. I literally don’t remember anything else at all.

DELAYNE : Yeah, most of my focus was on Evey, so, I mean, Rachel Weisz.

DARKWICCAN : That’s the Rachel Weisz character?

DELAYNE : That’s the Rachel Weisz character. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : And y'know it’s so funny, because for so many lesbian of our age, Rachel Weisz was like – experiencing Rachel Weisz in that movie was like a formative moment for them –

DELAYNE : Oh, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - and for me it was just like, just completely blew over my head because I did not – I already had crushes at that point. I was old enough to start having crushes, and my crushes were – I was not interested in – my heart was already assigned, basically, so Rachel Weisz, believe it or not, did not turn my head.

DELAYNE : [laughter] It’s surprising information. But –

DARKWICCAN : Hey, I’ve got a type, and I think you know my type, so. [Delayne laughs] And Rachel Weisz is a lovely, lovely, beautiful woman, but she’s not my type.

DELAYNE : Okay, I’ll give you that. But, y'know, what works really well is imagining Waverly as the Evey character.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : That is fair, I will give you that, one hundred percent. Now I need to go back and watch the movie, but mentally replace Rachel Weisz with Dominque Provost-Chalkley, and Brendan Fraser with Nicole Haught, or Kat Barrel, and everything will be perfect.

DELAYNE : Yeah. Yeah, that actually is really, like – we’ll never be able to have that, visually, expect for the fact that we have it here, as a fic, and it’s wonderful, and beautiful, and visually it works, in my head. So, you can’t ask for much more than that, right?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely, and that’s exactly what maidenstar has done here. But not entirely, because she sets the story in a different time period, the characters are – they don’t have the same mission statement as the characters in the movie.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : As far as I can tell, and yeah, it’s really fantastically written, and the characters are recognizable from canon, they have their canon characteristics, but they’re also their own people within this universe, and it’s so good. Maidenstar is just aces when it comes to writing alternative universe stories.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Ace bandages?

DARKWICCAN : Yes, ace bandages, that was my call-back. Good catch. [Delayne laughs] Mine are starting to itch a little bit, I might have to take them off. So what about this story like really stood out for you? I mean, I know what got my attention, beyond the obvious, but what really stood out for you in this story, Delayne?

DELAYNE : Well, because I do love the movie so much, I did like the updated, contemporary setting. I like how it was done, ‘cause y'know when you love an original work, and obsess over something, y'know when it’s different sometimes it can throw you, but I really liked how it was done here. And I think it worked really well to make it work, to make the two elements fit well together.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, you can tell that maidenstar has got an affinity, it seems like, for history. They even mention that in their notes, that they’re a bit of a history buff.

DELAYNE : There’s a lot of notes. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, there’s quite a lot of notes but, I mean, they’re all, y'know, very informative, and helpful, and insightful, and –

DELAYNE : And funny.

DARKWICCAN : And long?

DELAYNE : And funny. Funny.

DARKWICCAN : Funny. Yeah. And funny. But that’s one thing that really shines through, I think, is that affinity for history, and protecting history, and treating it with a certain degree of reverence, and that is something that comes through really strongly in Waverly’s character, and -

DELAYNE : I was just about to say that. [Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : Sorry. I will shut up, you go on.

DELAYNE : No, no, you’re actually usually more eloquent than I, but – [Delayne laughs] the few times that I do have something intelligent to say, and interject, and it’s like, oh, wait.

DARKWICCAN : Well great minds think alike, my friend.

DELAYNE : Hey, there you go. [laughter] So what about for you, then, what was your…?

DARKWICCAN : What stood out for me? Oh gosh.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : I would have to say the sort of eldritch horror of the mummy itself really stood out for me. [Delayne laughs] To the point where I actually had a nightmare about the mummy while reading this story. I mean, everything else is fantastic, y'know, as far as the build-up between Waverly and Nicole’s characters, Wynonna is hilarious, we’ve got Rosita in there, we’ve got Doc in there, and Dolls, and Jeremy. I mean, the whole gang is there, and they’re all handled –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - with excellent aplomb. But, for me, what really stood out and stuck with me was the mummy itself, because he was terrifying. [Delayne laughs] And remembering that I don’t remember the film that well, because I was just focused on Brendan Fraser swinging on a rope, apparently. [Delayne laughs] Don’t know why I had to watch him do that there, I could have seen him do it in _Tarzan. George of the Jungle_ , I should say, _George of the Jungle_.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Got a lot of swinging in there too. But, yeah, I just I genuinely don’t remember the movie, so I guess a lot of the story beats that happened that were drawn from the plot of the film, and kind of recycled and used in this story, where complete surprises to me. So there were things that happened that just had my jaw on the floor of like [gasp] oh my god. Y'know? [laughter] Yeah, so that’s what stood out for me, really.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I guess having seen the – remembering the creepy mummy, y'know, the terrifying in the dark situations that occurred when encountering the mummy, I wasn’t as affected as I was say when we talking about being lost in the woods, so, y'know. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. [laughter] Yeah, that might have just been because a) you didn’t actualy have a experience of being lost in the desert, being chased by a mummy, that you could draw from –

DELAYNE : Right. [Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : But you also remembered the film, and y'know, the events of the film, so there was a bit of a cushion there. But not for me, nope, nope, nope. [Delayne laughs] Y'know, I will say that I was in L.A. recently to see my dad’s show that was running at the Hollywood Fringe, and while I was there I actually met with good old Boo, also known as BaggerHeda, who we had on the show last week. Met up with Boo, and we actually toddled over to Universal Studios, and we went on the _Mummy_ ride, at Universal Studios, and I gotta say; not impressed.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I wasn’t even aware they had a _Mummy_ ride.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I know this has nothing to do with the fic, but to me it does a little bit, because the fic did, y'know, kind of freak me out a little bit, so I was hoping to go on this ride and be a little freaked out. I do enjoy the rush of adrenaline, and it let me down. So I will say that maidenstar’s fic was far more intense and scary for me than the rollercoaster ride thingy. [Delayne laughs] Dark ride slash mummy party dance thing, whatever the heck it was. [Delayne laughs] At Universal Studios.

I’m serious, there were neon, like, airbrushed like black light paintings of mummies like supposed to be coming at you, and it just looked so absurd. It looked like the type of art that you’d see on the back of somebody’s denim jacket that they took with them to like the country fair to have airbrushed. [Delayne laughs] Like it was just stupid, and so I got off I was so disappointed, ‘cause I wanted that same sort of rush and thrill that I got from reading the story.

But y'know what? I can keep going back to the story and I don’t have a pay a park admission.

DELAYNE : There you go. [laughter] Wow. [laughter] I – yeah – I don’t know where to go from there. [laughter] This fic is more fun than a rollercoaster ride. Actually, this fic is really fun. The quipping back and forth, especially between Nicole and Wynonna? Hilarious.

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah. I love that there is a – maidenstar absolutely establishes the BroTP almost right off the bat.

DELAYNE : Oh yeah. Waverly is kind of like, a little like thrown by it at first. I am remembering this correctly?

DARKWICCAN : You’re remembering right, yes, she’s sort of slow to join in because she’s kind of having to manage a whole lot, y'know, at the start. And I think yeah, she’s a little bit like, “Who is this stranger who is going to be taking us on this, y'know, trek through the desert? Who is this person? I don’t even know of I – they’re kind of cocky – I don’t didn’t even know if I can really trust them with my life, and here is my sister and this person just getting along like a house on fire, and I’m just standing here going [gurgle]. The fact that you’re very hot does not make up for the fact that I don’t know you”. Y'know, and I’m basically paraphrasing Waverly’s emotions at this point, like that’s not an actual line. I mean, that’s kind of essentially what’s going on. But suffice it all to say, yeah, the friendship between Wynonna and Nicole is fantastic, and is a lot of fun to watch play out. Y'know, Wynonna is her usual sarcastic, quippy, slightly drunk self.

DELAYNE : [laughter] “Slightly drunk”. Where does she keep getting all this alcohol? [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : “Where did the rum go? Why is the rum gone?” Well, Wynonna drank all of it. [Delayne laughs] Sorry, _Pirates of the Caribbean_ reference there, nothing to do with this. So, yeah. One think I thought was really interesting is how – and this may be from the movie as well, I genuinely don’t recall – but I did like how maidenstar set it up so that you have these two opposing teams of archeologists. So you have the good and noble archeological team, made up of our friends: Wynonna; and Nicole; and Waverly. And then you have the evil archeological team headed by Bobo Del Ray. And with whom is also Doc and Rosita, and so you kind of go “What on earth are Doc and Rosita doing with Bobo?”, I mean –

DELAYNE : I was surprised, too.

DARKWICCAN : It did make sense. Yeah it was a surprise, but it also makes sense.

DELAYNE : Yep.

DARKWICCAN : And of course you know, just you know, it’s not a spoiler to say, “well they’re not going to stay on his team for very long”.

DELAYNE : Yep. Yeah, I was definitely surprised, but as soon as they started showing – as soon as there was more scenes with them it’s like, “oh, okay, I see”. It works really well. And, y'know –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : - from what I recall of the movie, there was the two opposing sides, ‘cause that –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, were there?

DELAYNE : Yeah, that scene where; “Hey, I have all the horses!” – “Hey, you’re on the wrong side of the river!”

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that was awesome.

DELAYNE : And it was sort of – in the fic – I mean the scene wasn’t exact in the movie, but Nicole’s like, “Yeah, they’re on the wrong side, so we have a head start”.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and that was really fun. This is a very fast-paced moving story –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - the element of action is very well-written, and it’s exciting, y'know, that element of the race to get to the site first, y'know, and to get to the excavating first, and really because Waverly is so intent on preserving the history, because Bobo and his ilk are more of, “let’s take this and steal it and sell it”, so there’s that element of y'know being on the right side of the situation as far as morals go. So there’s that race as well. And so that was just really intense, like ‘cause there’ a period of like one or two chapters – maybe it’s only one chapter – where they’re trekking across the desert after they’ve, y'know, washed up on the river’s beach and are trying to make their way to the site. And it’s like – because the two groups have gone off in two separate directions, you literally have no idea where Bobo and his crew are in relationship to our heroes. So that was very intense and exciting, and kind of like oh gosh, where are they, how much time have they made up, how close are they, are they gonna make it in time? Y'know? And so that was really fun.

DELAYNE : And of course it was the intensity is spurred on because they made a bet about it. [laughter] ‘Cause Wynonna had to –

DARKWICCAN : Yes, there was a bet.

DELAYNE : - go and mention something during the poker game.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yes. Well, we know how Wynonna is with maybe flapping her yap when she shouldn’t. [Delayne laughs] But, yeah, maidenstar does such a great job of writing action, and that is so difficult. It is so hard to write action well, and keep it interesting, and exciting, and being able to visualize it clearly, is hard to do.

DELAYNE : Yes. I don’t even know if I’ve tried, because it’s just so scary to even attempt it, like, uhh, that’s, I just – it’s not easy. Not easy.

DARKWICCAN : It’s not, it’s really not, because you have to strike this perfect balance of description and pace, and that – and keeping track of where your characters are. [laughter]

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Y'know? And when you have a melee, and you have multiple characters, y'know, and multiple matches going on, and it’s just sort of this wild free for all, that is like ten times harder, if not more, than just like a, y'know, a fight between two people.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : ‘Cause you’re having to keep track of where people are in their individual scraps, and where their hands are, and legs, and like, y'know, who’s got weapons, who doesn’t, y'know? It’s just there’s a lot going on, and again just maidenstar does a fantastic job of providing those descriptions in a really dynamic and fun and exciting way.

DELAYNE : Yeah, ‘cause as you said about paving, because action happens quickly, but if you write it too quick then you’re missing stuff. But if you don’t write it quick enough, then it doesn’t feel that – you don’t have that action, that movement that is needed for it to feel like action, so.

DARKWICCAN : Right, you lose that forward momentum and then it just becomes a bit of a slog, y'know, trying to get through.

DELAYNE : Yeah, like walking through sand. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, wayhey, nice reference.

DELAYNE : Walking through dunes is not easy. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : I’ve never been in dunes quite as that, I’ve been in much smaller, or just partially sandy areas.

DARKWICCAN : Little dunelets. Or shall we say dune-uts? Hey, hey. [Delayne laughs] But there’s a lot going on that maidenstar has to kind keep her plates spinning, and they do a really fantastic job of it. There’s the, of course, the race to the tomb. And then there is the discovery of the contents within. And on top of that you have Waverly and Nicole growing ever closer, but still trying to maintain a sort of professional distance. You have the other characters that start coming into the narrative that you have to keep track of. You have what happens after – [Delayne laughs]

DELAYNE : You have the –

DARKWICCAN : - certain mistakes are made.

DELAYNE : - quickly leaping, as fast as they were trying to get there.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And then, y'know, how much time do you give these characters a break before you get into the next, y'know, dynamic sequence?

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : And again, I cannot stress enough how excellent maidenstar is at handling all of these elements. I, again, I’m not a fan of the movie, I don’t remember much of it, but boy am I a fan of this fic. This fic – if they made a movie of this fic.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Right?

DARKWICCAN : I would be front row with my 3D glasses on. [Delayne laughs] Popcorn at the ready.

DELAYNE : Throwing the popcorn up in the air when the mummy jumps out.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : Another thing that I really like is how we incorporate the _Wynonna Earp_ mythology of Wyatt and stuff being passed down through the family, which is –

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : - yeah, I – absolutely amazing how they use Wyatt and the – even “the one year wonder” reference is thrown in there. But yeah, and then it comes down to Waverly – the way – at least the way Ward had treated Waverly, in that she wasn’t- they didn’t encourage her to be a part of the business, but she was the one, of course, most interested.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. And also her passion for history –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - and wanting to keep it safe and again revered, I know being a bit redundant with that, but yeah.

DELAYNE : And then Wynonna’s still kind of in the same vein, but she’s a little more on the treasure hunter side, which fits well with the story of the movie. ‘Cause the brother is – [laughter] Yeah. These two things you wouldn’t think fit so well together fit unbelievably well together, and maidenstar did an even like more fantastic job of weaving all of these elements in such a way that like this is the way movie should have been.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely, and you kind of wonder did they plot everything out to align with the movie. How heavily – it feels like the story had to be heavily plotted in advance, because as I said there’s so many plates spinning in the air, I don’t see how they could have written it without some of a guideline, a map to get them y'know from beginning to story beat, to story beat, to end, y'know? It’s just-

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - super intense. And you know what? We can actually ask maidenstar if they did plot it out.

DELAYNE : It’s amazing how we can do that.

DARKWICCAN : Isn’t it? It really is kinda nifty. Because yes, that’s right folks, we did ask maidenstar to come on the show today, talk with us in our second segment, discuss this beautifully written alternative universe fic that they’ve created. So we will be getting to that in just a few moments.

But before we can, of course we have to do our usual weekly housekeeping.

[CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

Other exciting things: we are very, very close to knowing the winner of the EFA Fic Challenge. So obviously by the time this airs it will have been well over, and you will know for sure, for sure, but we still have a few hours left in our final round. And it is actually between maidenstar and sensitive_pigeon, so we’ll see who comes out on the other side of that. And of course whoever wins, I will be recording an audiobook version of their submission, and I’m really excited to get down to that proves, that’s going to be really cool. So –

DELAYNE : Yeah. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Also this is our twenty-seventh episode, which means we’re only three episodes away from our season finale, and again, that season finale will be featuring the audiobook recording of the winner of the challenge. So that’ll be cool. But yeah, I think that wraps it for housekeeping, except for [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Heart of the Forest by Alec Holowka

Whether it's con panels, web videos or Instagram stories, Transcribing Earpers do it all.

The Earper Community prides itself as being as inclusive as possible and Transcribing Earpers do their part to ensure that the Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and individuals with Auditory Processing Disorder of our family are able to participate without barriers.

You can learn more about Transcribing Earpers by visiting their website at W-E Transcripts dot wordpress dot com. There you'll find all of the latest transcripts, broken down by category.

You can also follow them over on Twitter at Earp Transcribe and on Tumblr at _Wynonna Earp_ Transcripts.

Transcribing Earpers, because it's everybody's shit show.

ADVERTISMENT ENDS

MUSIC : Digsite by Robby Dugua

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody and welcome back to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my delightful co-host –

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we are very excited because we have with us today the brains behind the fantastic _Mummy_ AU that we were discussing in our first segment today, the story ‘throw all your hells towards the heavens’, the author maidenstar. Maidenstar, welcome to the show.

A LISSA : Hi there, thank you for having me.

DARKWICCAN : Is it okay for us to call you maidenstar, or do you have another name you’d like us to call you?

A LISSA : Just A Lissa’s fine.

DARKWICCAN : A Lissa. Well, A Lissa, welcome to show. Thank you so much.

DELAYNE : Hello A Lissa.

A LISSA : Heya.

DARKWICCAN : So it is great to have you on, Delayne and I were talking before we started recording today, you are one of our favorite authors, we have enjoyed everything that you have written and put out for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom. So this is a real treat.

A LISSA : Oh, thank you, I’m really, really excited to come on and talk to you guys, thank you very much for having me. It’s a crazy feeling, I never expect anyone to read anything I write, so it’s just really exciting.

DARKWICCAN : You know that seems to be a common thread among most fic authors, they all kinda go, “Wait. You read it?”

A LISSA : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : “I didn’t think anyone was gonna read it. Really? Oh.” [Delayne laughs] So yes, we are reading what you’re writing, and what you’re writing is fantastic.

A LISSA : Aw, thank.

DELAYNE : And most of them usually go, “I’ve never expected to be on podcast, either.” [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. I think that is more of a reasonable surprise, ‘cause I feel like there might be other podcasts out there that focus on fanfic, but we are the one and only to focus exclusively on _Wynonna Earp_ fanfic, so.

DELAYNE : Yes.

A LISSA : Yeah I think you’ve got the kind of monopoly on that one. I’ve never heard of other fandoms really doing it either, so it’s just a really exciting – _Wynonna Earp_ fandom generally is just a really exciting, engaged fandom, and I think this is a really good like pointer of that, to be honest.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely, I completely agree. I think that the quality of the fanfic speaks for the quality of the fandom.

A LISSA : I completely agree.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN :  Yeah.

DELAYNE : Quality. Earpers are quality.

DARKWICCAN : So you have been – you’ve written for other fandoms, correct? Looking at you kind of works list on AO3 I see that you’ve dabbled in other fandoms. What drew you to writing for _Wynonna Earp_?

A LISSA : Yeah, I mean, I’ve been writing fanfiction for probably what I would call an embarrassingly long time, I guess. But I don’t know what specifically drew me to writing for _Wynonna Earp_ , I think I just got into the show really, really quickly. It just went from sort of like binging season one, and catching up in time for about season two episode six. And just kind of becoming that person who was getting up – obviously, being in Britain – getting up at all stupid hours to watch live, and completely immerse myself in the show, and the fandom. And I think it just kind of felt like a natural extension of that, just immediately wanting to tell more stories, and read more fanfic, and just get into it completely.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, absolutely. Are there any characters, other than the obvious, within _Wynonna Earp_ that you really kinda connected with, and wanted to extrapolate their stories on?

A LISSA : Yeah, outside of the obvious two, I’m very, very bias towards Rosita, like I have a huge – I’m just completely fascinated with her character, and just her backstory, and it’s just kind of gutting to know that we probably won’t get more of that this season. But fingers crossed for a season four with more of her, ‘cause I find everything about Rosita really, really interesting.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, she’s a fantastic character. I was not expecting that turn at the end, but it made so much sense, and at the same time like I couldn’t be angry at her. I mean, I could be – I was angry at her in the moment, but then afterwards I was like, “no, I completely - like she had her world kind of ripped out from under, her safety blanket was taken away, and yeah, what would you do if you were just trying to stay alive?

A LISSA : Yeah, exactly, and I mean obviously she’s got this huge thing hanging over her of if she gets put down, she’s going straight back to hell, and I don’t know, do we know if she’s been back since? I get the impression she’s been hiding the entire time, and just that kind of hanging over you must make you absolutely desperate just to survive at any cost.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that there is, y'know, still some negativity toward Rosita in the fandom. I think it’s getting better, though. Especially since we’ve had a very, very long time since the end of last season to sort of think about what happened, and maybe be able to look at it from, like, y'know, a different perspective, and yeah, I’m hoping that we get a Rosita redemption arc in season four, that would be fantastic.

DELAYNE : I agree.

DARKWICCAN : I wanna see her back on my screen.

A LISSA : Absolutely. Same, yeah, I couldn’t have put it better myself. I feel that she’s been very harshly judged by fandom, and I would love to just see her get the storyline she deserves in the future.

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely. And you did give her a pretty decent storyline in your work -

A LISSA : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - ‘throw all your hells towards the heavens’ so yeah. I really enjoyed reading your Rosita, she was a lot of fun. I loved how smart she was, but also she retained some of the canonical elements of her character, and being a bit self-preserving, and yeah. I really – she was loyal, but self-preserving, and just awesome. Super whip-smart, yep, yep, yep.

A LISSA : So much fun to write.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I like how you used everyone, and put them in – how well you incorporated all of it into the movie setting. And mostly I’m curious - ‘cause you know the movie is set in the early twentieth century - why did you set the story in the contemporary setting, and not like the movie setting?

A LISSA : Yeah, that’s such a good question, ‘cause I don’t even know if I had this like conscious thought process on it. I think one thing was that I just really wanted to try and like keep elements of the characters identifiable with the canon, and I think from a feasibility perspective I just honestly found it easier to put three women in that world of like archeology, military, whatever it is that Wynonna’s doing, in like a contemporary thing.

And I know that sounds probably strange, because it’s like a total fantasy vibe, sci-fi vibe anyway, but I just sometimes think like you’ve got to give that inch of believability in something. And I just thought putting them in the contemporary was just something that made it a bit more like relatable, I guess, and relevant.

And like there’s this really like – there’s actually this really boring reason as well, where like obviously I love the movies, but I encountered them when I was really young, and I’m like a history graduate myself, and it just makes me think of this really horrible time in history when people where just going around from Britain and American and everywhere just sort of stealing history. And it’s just not something that I could see Waverly doing. It just wasn’t something that I could really get Waverly into that mindset of, and so I thought it was easier to connect the era in the _Mummy_ movies to Wyatt, and almost pretend rather than him being this old-timey law keeper, he was this old-timey Howard Carter type guy, and take it from there. I just think it was – it made more sense to me for Waverly’s perspective on history, to have it set like that.

DELAYNE : That makes a lot of sense to me, too.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I completely agree with you, like I never like questioned the decision to make it a more contemporary piece. And maybe that’s because I’m not as familiar with the films, just ‘cause I’ve only seen one of them and that was when I was quite young. But –

DELAYNE : I watched it a lot. It was the second DVD I owned. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : But yeah, I think that all three of the female characters – Nicole, Wynonna, and Waverly – are all very kind of feministy, forward-thinking women, and as you say, your Waverly is very protective of history, and the value of history. And yeah, she wouldn’t go ‘round stealing stuff. She sorta ended up accidentally doing that, but. [Delayne laughs]

A LISSA : She means to puts it back.

DELAYNE : It’s borrowing. Borrowing.

DARKWICCAN : Borrowing with the intent to return… never. [laughter] So this is a very fast-paced, exciting, adventurous – well, it’s a fast-[aced, exciting adventure movie that’s basically written in story form. So how heavily did you find yourself needing to plot out this entire piece in advance?

A LISSA : Yeah, yeah, quite heavily, actually. I mean, I always have this thing that I say, where I say that like it’s kind of a joke that I’m a bad writer ‘cause I just love developing characters and relationships. And I could do that forever, just to the complete detriment of plot.

And so the number of times something’s died on me because I just haven’t really considered that I need to have a plot as well as characters. That’s a lot, so yeah, I have – I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad tendency, but it’s just a tendency to dive into a writing project by like writing out some long introspective thing, and just kind of like hoping I’m gonna flesh it out from there. And that’s – I can tell you now, that’s how all of the longer AUs that I’ve written started, because that’s how everything I do ends up starting.

So I can’t remember which scene from each of those AUs that I started with in the chaos of me writing anything, but I think – I wanna say _Mummy_ AU was probably the scene with Nicole and Waverly on the boat at the start. And I think from there I just sort of tried to see would this be workable, could I get a plot out of it, and then once I’d decided actually the two of them combined really, really well, I absolutely bullet pointed that fic to probably within an inch of its life, and my life, just trying to [laughter] work out if this was actually gonna go anywhere.

So, yeah, I’m not good at starting with the plot, but I really have to force myself to get it down if I’m gonna write something from start to finish.

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha, yeah. Well I can respect that a lot, I am similar in how I approach my writing as well, it always tends to start from a moment in time that I’ve imagined, and is built more off of the characters than off of any sort of arc, really. Without, y'know – I don’t necessarily have a beginning, middle, and an end in mine, I just have this one little scene that is purely based in who these two people are, either within themselves, or to each other, or both. So I completely getcha there.

A LISSA : Yeah, no, that’s exactly the same for me, and as I’ve always said I mean I’m so character focused I could watch pretty much any show if it’s just giving me constant character stuff. And so that’s go through in my writing as well, so yeah, it always starts with some really minor thing that you think of, and it just has to grow from there, really.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Have you ever run into an issue where you have come up with an idea, and you plot it out, and then you sit down to write it but your brain tells you, “no, no, you’ve already written this”.

A LISSA : Yeah. No, exactly that, I’ve got quite a few things kind of on hold indefinitely like that, where you know that it’s all sort of there, and it almost becomes a lot of work just to kind of join the dots up and everything, and your brain just goes, “well, I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do now. I’ve done it, this is done” when it’s so far from done that you can’t even really put any of it out there at that stage.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and that’s so frustrating, ‘cause you’re like, I’ve got this story, and it’s amazing, but, like, can I just like draw pictures of it? [laughter]

A LISSA : Can I just describe it?

DARKWICCAN : Let me just give you the outline, okay? Check out how amazing this outline is, yeah.

A LISSA : Just sit here with me, I’ll just tell you what’s gonna happen in this story, I’m just not going to write it.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, exactly, exactly. [laughter]

DELAYNE : It must have helped having the movie, and having, y'know, the plot –

A LISSA : Yeah.

DELAYNE : - sort of already out there, formulated. But yeah, the way that you incorporate – you smushed it all together was fabulous. Aside from the premise, what were the elements from the films that you wanted to bring into the fic the most?

A LISSA : This definitely relates to what I was just saying about characters. I think just the dynamics between the characters, and I think I really – and I kind of hope it came across this way – I really was focused on Waverly’s relationships with the people around her, so both Nicole and Wynonna. And I kind of was trying to really tie it into like Evy’s journey through the movie as well. I like to think I took them on similar journeys, but I’m a bit biased on both those characters, so it could be that my judgment is really off, but I think, yeah, the general structure of the characters is what I was really trying to get, and the dynamics, and probably the tone. I mean, I like to think that I sort of was aware of this story being really silly, kind of not taking itself seriously, and I think that’s kind of what the _Mummy’s_ all about, it’s like silly, pretty like pun-based humor, and I just found that a really fun thing to weave into like the Earps, and Nicole, and everything. And I’m probably saying that –

DELAYNE : The quips back and forth between the characters are fricking fantastic.

A LISSA : Yeah, I’m with you, that was the most fun to part to write, that was easily the most fun thing to do.

DARKWICCAN : Y'know you say that is was – that you kind of kept it silly, and I do agree that there are elements of silliness, or recognizing that the premise is silly, or what have you, but honestly like, there was very dramatic scary moments in this story.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

A LISSA : Yeah, that – I think that was probably part of the joy of that movie, in itself, that it goes from just being completely absurd, to having this ridiculously horrible concept, like almost one frame to the next. And I think that’s part of the fun of – and sometimes part of the fun of _Wynonna Earp_ as well – it can go from one tone to the next just like in the sort of flick of a switch, really.

DARKWICCAN : Was it a no brainer for you, having Waverly essentially sacrifice herself?

A LISSA : Yes, pretty much. I think – I like to think that that’s quite a Waverly move, in some ways. I think she’s quite – got to the stage where she can be quite ride or die about things, I mean, just in terms of in canon, she’s so desperate to just join Black Badge, and so desperate – and I know in season two you’ve got to take into account kind of the Mikshun element to it as well- but she’s so desperate just to throw herself into stuff, and to help. And she wants to prove herself, I think, and she wants to try and help Wynonna, and help those around her, and I just think that’s exactly what she’d probably try and do in that context as well, in the _Mummy_ contex as well.

DARKWICCAN : Well I felt like it was a really great call back to the second season, with episode 2x05, where Waverly says to Wynonna, y'know, that – I’m paraphrasing horribly – but something about like she knows that Wynonna can’t beat Mikshun as long as Mickshun is inside of her, Wynonna, but Wynonna could beat Mikshun if Mikshun was inside of Waverly, and Waverly just trusts Wynonna to save her.

A LISSA : Yes. Yeah, I think that that’s such an important of Waverly’s character that I wanted to get across, is that she trusts those around her, and I think it’s something that the actors say a lot about Waverly, is that she see a lot of the good, and a lot of the strengths in people, and I think that’s she’s willing to give that trust to them. And I think that was something that I was trying to get across a little bit in the scene as well.

DARKWICCAN : I just remember my jaw hit the floor. I was like [gasp] “wha the – wha – “. I was like “What just happened? What just happened? Why did this happen? Nooo.” Yeah. [laughter]

DELAYNE : It sounds pretty much like what Nicole and Wynonna were going through, too.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. [laughter]

A LISSA : I think I just took for granted, knowing the movie so well, I just took for granted how much of this might be a bit of a like – ‘cause I was writing going, “well, nobody’s going to be shocked by any of this”, ‘cause if you’ve seen the movie you know what’s coming, but, then, yeah, it was always kind of interesting to hear that actually people hadn’t seen the movie. It is all quite an unexpected turn of events, I think.

DELAYNE : Oh.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, or people who have seen the movie, but only once, and when they were children. [laughter] It was a total shock, ‘cause I didn’t remember that at all. I barely remember the movie, I’ll be honest.  I remember Brendan Fraser swinging on a rope in a tomb. That’s pretty much it [Delayne laughs]

A LISSA : We’ll keep working on that.

DELAYNE : I remember drunk Evy, that’s my scene. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : So I know we talked about Rosita earlier, and sort of how Rosita relates to the canon story, but within this story, within the story that you created here, of all the character which do you feel relates to you the most?

A LISSA : Broken record, here, but Waverly a hundred percent. I think that’s always going to be my answer to any kind of _Wynonna Earp_ question. I just feel like in the AU, in the show, I can connect to Waverly on probably too many levels, levels that kind of make me question my ability to write her, I think. Because I’m just writing things and going, “I am writing Waverly, or I am I just running with this idea that I think she’d have, or something.

But yeah, I definitely feel like relating to the show, to me, the older I get the more ride or die I get as well. I can pretty much definitely see I could probably just agree to join Nicole on a crazy ride – I mean, it’s Nicole, so probably would just join her on a crazy ride to the desert without really thinking it through. On a different level I’m super into history, y'know, just kind of obvious things about Waverly, but yeah, definitely her mindset and her – the way that I sort of felt like she over-thought quite a lot in the start of the fic, that would be really me as well. I just think, yeah, Waverly would be the obvious choice there, to be honest.

DARKWICCAN : That’s a great answer. [laughter]

DELAYNE : Most authors have one particular character that they really connect with, and that’s generally the point of view that they write from.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, yeah.

A LISSA : Yeah, absolutely. As I say, I think sometimes I find it easier to write Nicole though, because I’m not second-guessing whether I’m writing her as I think she is, or just writing some kind of weird self-insert into a fanfic. Whereas I think with Waverly I question a lot more about what I’m writing, am I just correctly characterizing her, or am I sort of making her into something that I would want her to be, based on the fact that I relate to her, so. I think it just depends on the day, really, and how I’m feeling when I’m writing.

DELAYNE : That’s a very good point too, yeah. That is – [Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, I totally get that, hundred percent. Yeah, because I personally tend to align more with Nicole, when I’m writing, so I’m constantly going, “Wait a minute; is this Nicole, or is this me?” But if I’m writing from Waverly’s point of view, I’m just like flying along, ‘cause I’m like, “this is totally Waverly, no problem, diddle-liddle-liddle-liddle-loo [ph]”. So, yeah.

A LISSA : Yeah, that sounds relatable.

DELAYNE : Well, to bring it back to some of the scarier, intense moments; did you ever spook yourself when you were writing?

A LISSA : Yeah, I don’t think I actually did, to be honest. I think at this point, again, it comes down to the fact that I have seen those movies so many times, it’s hard for like it to be a creepy concept to me now. I think, like, I’m kind of baby, actually, like so it is definitely possible that I would be a position where I could myself when I write something, I think that’s something that I would absolutely do, but I think in this case I was just a bit too used to _The Mummy_ to really, by just sort of like how insanely creepy some of this stuff is. And I think I was a bit conscious of – I don’t wanna say toning it down, because I know y'know we’re looking at _Wynonna Earp_ , it’s a show where certainly in the first season you’ve got some pretty gruesome stuff that’s happening, so it’s sort of in the same tone as the show, but I sort of was kind of keeping it a bit lighter, and obviously with fanfic you wanna be aware of sort of what you’re rating your fanfic on sort of the Archive, and everything, and making sure it stays in that kind of realm. So I wasn’t kind of wanting to put too much creepy, gory stuff in, but I think it is just hard to find that balance, so I think that was distracting me from it, a little bit. And yeah, I think _The Mummy_ as a concept is quite creepy, but I still think the worst thing is always what happened to Carl, or the Carl character in _The Mummy_ , that’s the part that I think I was not super enjoying writing, and thinking about, and picturing to try and write it.

DELAYNE : Ugh, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Ugh, yeah, ugh, ugh, yeah.

DELAYNE : Thanks for that reminder. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : I’d forgot – augh – poor Carl – ugh. Never thought I’d say poor Carl. But, yeah, have to admit, I gotta admit, there was the sequence where – interestingly, it wasn’t the Carl bit that did this to me, but the bit at the – when they’re back at BBD, and they’re lying in the dark, and the mummy comes up on them and it’s this dark figure. I had a nightmare about that, so thank you so much. [Delayne laughs]

A LISSA : That’s – that is a bit of a bit that I – well, I kind of based it on some of the movie, but that was a bit more that I sort of just pulled out of nowhere, really, and I was writing it and I was thinking, “oh, this isn’t that bad, that’s alright, like that’s not as bad as the first part, where they first see the mummy”. And loads of people said to me that it was worse, and I hadn’t really realized, so I’ll have to be a bit careful if I ever try and do something like that again.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : It was just so spooky, and creepy, and – [laughter] it’s just [vocalized noise of agitation] because I was reading it, y'know, in broad daylight, on the train, and so at the time I was just lie, “oh, man, that’s really spooky,” but then, y'know, that night it was like my brain went, “let’s replay this”.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Stupid brains.

A LISSA : You just need it to, like when you are lying down or something it will just bring up some kind of horrible thought and you’re like, “Why did you think that right now?”

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Like, did you have to? Stupid brain. Yeah, it’s either that, or my brain will start playing some pop song from the eighties. Yeah. [laughter] So talking about things being spooky, and this adventure story, and things like that. There was a lot of really great, very, very well written, easy to visualize action sequences in this story. And that’s unusual, honestly, to find a well-written action sequence in a story. They’re usually kind of clunky, and either they’re over-explained, or under-explained, and either situation is good, but you seem to hit that sweet spot, being just right. So I have to ask you was it difficult, or fun, to write these intense sequences?

A LISSA : Well, firstly, thank you, ‘cause that was – I mean, I was a bit nervous writing those scenes. I think this kind of relates a little bit to what I was saying about plot, in that I’m terrible at stuff that’s external, like I’m always into kind of what’s going on internally in a character, not what’s happening around them, so I’ve not as far as I can remember written something like that ever before.

So I was definitely a bit nervous, and I found it a bit difficult to approach them. And I think this something that writers a hundred times better than me have said loads of times before, but categorically, one of the hardest things you’re gonna do as a writer is physically move your characters. Especially in a way that’s like really clear, and really fun, ‘cause I just feel like action scenes will just amp that up, like I don’t know about other people when they write, but I always find that like it doesn’t matter where I left my characters, they are never there when I go back to them. So I’m just like, no, I’m sure I told you to do something else like three paragraphs ago, or like in this fic space, but I’m just there going, “Did I say Nicole had a gun, or did I say she didn’t have a gun?”

Like, and I find it so difficult to keep track of them all, so in some ways it was just really difficult, but then I’m the kind of person that I think it was really fun, because I’ve never done it before, so I was kind of learning as I went, and just kind trying stuff out, and I think those are probably the scenes I re-drafted the most, because I had to try and get them to the point where they made any sense to anyone but me. ‘Cause in my head I knew where those people where, but I feel like the first few times I tried it nobody else would have had a clue what was going on.

So, really fun, but kind of a sitting on the fence answer, ‘cause fun but tough was definitely how those scenes kind of went down for me.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Well I think that’s a reasonable answer. Fun but tough, yeah.

DELAYNE : And impressive, that, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Very impressive.

DELAYNE : ‘Cause I do not do action sequences either. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I have a really tough time myself.

A LISSA : Yeah I can’t think I’m –

DARKWICCAN : Super impressed.

A LISSA : - gonna ever write - I’m not gonna chose to write many of them again, ‘cause they are, they’re really tough, but yeah, it was fun, but they’re never gonna be my favorites, ever.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : What I find, for me anyway, when I’m writing a quote unquote “action sequence” is it feels like it takes hours, and then you go back and it’s like four sentences long, and you’re like, “Why?” [Delayne laughs]

A LISSA : In my case I had to go back and change them, because they’re still not – like, as I say, she’s still done something that she wasn’t supposed to do, or she was the other side of the room when I last left her. It is, yeah, it’s like herding animals, when you’re doing it. [laughter] That’s the only thing I can think of that’s comparable to trying to get characters to do the right things in an action scene.

DELAYNE : Go with the – over there – just go.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : So you mention that you’re quite the history buff yourself. Was – do you have a background in ancient Egypt – history – I don’t know the lingo, I apologize –but it is that like what you’re main focus of study was, or at least a section of study? Or did you have to like dig out the old tomes and start y'know kind of going through it?

A LISSA : No, I have no academic training in ancient history, almost whatsoever. I have a few classic history things that I’ve done, sort of at university, but none of that was on Egypt. I just was one of those very strange like children who just read books about this stuff all the time. Like the – a really fun self-insert thing was Waverly being obsessed with the goy Egypt stuff, because I felt like that was just me, that was the kind of person I was. So I just literally read all this stuff when I was quite a bit a younger, and it has really stuck with me, so when I was dong the fic I had to fact-check a few little things that I wasn’t sure if I could remember properly, but no, it was mostly just stuff that I’d read a long time ago. But no, my history degrees where all completely the opposite end of history, they were all super modern.

DARKWICCAN : So contemporary history? [laughter]

DELAYNE : Yeah, I had a period in childhood where yeah, I think it was eighth grade that we learned about ancient Egypt, and Rome, and Greece, and man I loved that year of school. That was my favorite class.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I think, gosh, when was that? That was middle school for me.

A LISSA : I don’t even think –

DELAYNE : Yeah, eighth grade would be middle school.

DARKWICCAN : So that would be – well I don’t know what that be over in the U.K. I have no idea.

A LISSA : I’m very bad that – no, I’m always so cautious about things, like I wanna write high school stuff, and then I realize that I know nothing about how you guys do school, and I’m just realizing it sounds really overwhelming to learn. Middle school, I’m guessing kind of like year seven, or year eight, maybe, for us. How old is that?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, seventh of eighth grade, yeah, yeah, well, wouldn’t say grade, but yeah. You know what you should do, then? You should write an AU where they’re in like a British like public school.

A LISSA : Yeah, that might be the only way I can ever make high school stuff work, if they just magically live in Britain, for no reason.

DARKWICCAN : Well, I mean, at least with Waverly you’ve got a little bit of an in, y'know, but with Nicole she’s the daughter of, y'know, military parents who have been stationed in the U.K., and so –

A LISSA : They both just improbably transport over, they’re the only Canadian ones, everyone else is British. I can probably work with that.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : You could totally do that. Absolutely. Well, now that we’ve seated your next idea.

A LISSA : Everyone just suspends their disbelief on the rest of it, it’s fine.

DELAYNE : I’ve made them British ‘cause I want to.

DARKWICCAN : Well, A Lissa, it has been so much fun chatting with you, oh my goodness, we should do this more often.

A LISSA : Yes, I would be up for that, it’s been great fun. Thank you guys so much.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I was gonna say something else, and I don’t know what that was. Delayne? Oh, yes, hey, there’s one more thing we have to do.

DELAYNE : Right? [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : There’s one more question that we must ask you, muwhahaha. And that is the final question.

DELAYNE : Alright.

A LISSA : Oh, gosh, I know what torture is coming. [Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, okay, good, good, you’re prepared. Excellent. We’ve got you in the hot seat, strapped in tight. Alright, Delayne, take over.

DELAYNE : You are stranded on a desert island, and can only have one fanfic to read. What is it?

A LISSA : Okay so I went into this huge panic, because I was aware this was coming. I am gonna preface this by saying that I do not have as much time to read or write _Wynonna Earp_ fanfic as I used to, and it makes me said that my to read list is as long as my arm, and that I couldn’t take all of them, but, like the instantaneous first thought I had when I knew this was gonna happen to me was ‘too much’ by brogurt. And I know it’s a one-shot, so it’s probably the least advisable thing to take to a desert island, ‘cause it – [laughter] – I mean easily the _Wynonna Earp_ fanfic I go back to and re-read the most. I just love everything about that Tinder AU. That it’s just really – everything about it is great, and I mean I could have – there’s so many other fics that are out there that I could have picked.

I also really wanted to choose this really underrated one-shot called ‘the wanting is hard’ by KelseyO. It’s about Rosita, Nicole, and Waverly. I think about that a lot, but no, [Delayne laughs] I’m gonna out there on the island, re-reading the same one shot over and over.

DARKWICCAN : Well at least it’s got over ten thousand words, so it’s not like too short.

A LISSA : No.

DARKWICCAN : And you could y'know savour it, take your time.

A LISSA : I could, yeah. I’ve read it enough times already anyway, so I think I could carry on.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, excellent. Fantastic. So we will make sure to provide a link to ‘too much’ by brogurt as your desert island fic on our webpage when we post this episode. A Lissa, again, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to join us, to chat about your amazing _Mummy_ AU, ‘throw all your hells toward[s the] heaven[s]’, and have a fantastic weekend.

A LISSA : Thank you, you guys too, thank you so much for having me.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for joining us. Tremendous thanks to Maidenstar for joining us for today's author interview. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Heart of the Forest by Alec Holowka; Digsite by Robby Dugua; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast


	28. Choose Your Own Adventure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week on the podcast DW and Delayne have some choices to make as they chat about the fantastic reader-influenced work 'WayHaught: Choose Your Own Story'. Then they sit down with author Orange17!

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/choose-your-own-adventure)

 

Read the fic!

'[WayHaught: Choose Your Own Story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13851741)' by Orange17

 

Episode artwork by: [Chantal Zeegers](http://youareavision.tumblr.com/)

 

 

Orange17's Desert Island Fic: ['Guardian/Angel'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11917239) by NeedyLoneWolf

 

Episode Transcript for the Deaf and HOH by Flying Fanatic!

 

EFA Episode 28 - Choose Your Own Adventure

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated exclusively to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my lovely co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And this week, Delayne, I have a question for you. Actually, several.

DELAYNE : Oh, really?

DARKWICCAN : Yes, I do. Are you ready?

DELAYNE : We’re gonna do this a little differently, you’re throwing me off here.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, trying to catch you off guard. Here we go. Would you rather: option one, talk about the fic we’re here to talk about today first; option two, do our housekeeping early; or option three, dealer’s choice?

DELAYNE : [laughter] Have I ever told you about the sticker that I used to have on my water bottle?

DARKWICCAN : This is a roundabout answer, but no, you haven’t. Go for it.

DELAYNE : It says, “I used to be indecisive, but now I’m not so sure”. [laughter] So can you guess which answer I’m gonna give you?

DARKWICCAN : I think you’re probably gonna give me dealer’s choice.

DELAYNE : Bingo! [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Alright. [laughter] Well I think why don’t do our housekeeping a little early this time, and then we’ll dive into the fic we’re all here to talk about.

DELAYNE : I like that plan. I’m here for it.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so it is episode twenty-eight out of a thirty episode first season.

DELAYNE : [gasp] Wow.

DARKWICCAN : Holy macaroni and cheese, this is immense. [Delayne laughs] It’s one of things were we hadn’t even decided how many – if we were gonna stick to – like do a season thing, really, and I think once we kinda hit twenty episodes we were both starting to get to that point where it’s like, I don’t know if we keep this momentum going without a break.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Yeah. I mean, I think we have to, because of Clexacon, that was our first break, and man, we were – it was rough.

DARKWICCAN : And even then it wasn’t really a break, right? Because we were at Clexacon, so that was happening.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] But, yeah, so it is has been a fantastic, and fast-paced, and intense, and wild ride, and I wouldn’t change it for anything, but yeah, we need a little vacation. So as I said, we are episode twenty-eight of thirty, just two episodes left in this season, and we are just absolutely thrilled, it has been such an immense and wonderful ride, from the start. I can’t believe that we have almost eight hundred Twitter followers, Delayne.

DELAYNE : Really?

DARKWICCAN : Well, I mean, we’re more than seven hundred.

DELAYNE : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : Less than eight hundred. But more than seven hundred, like, yeah.

DELAYNE : I think we have fifty-five, maybe sixty followers on Facebook as well.

DARKWICCAN : And that’s great, ‘cause y'know Facebook it’s harder to build up a following, and so yeah, that’s just – I can’t believe it. I can’t – it’s incredible. And I mean, I think by the time this episode airs EHCon will have already happened –

DELAYNE : Ooh.

DARKWICCAN : - but – yeah – but I mean, I got the most incredible – the most incredible thing happened to me the other day. Bonnie, the coordinator and chairperson for EHCon, reached out to me and was like, “Hey, we wanna have a fanfic panel. You wanna moderate it?” [laughter] And I’m like, “… [gulp] Yes! Yes I do”. [Delayne laughs] [voice goes squeaky] Yes, absolutely I wanna do that thing!

DELAYNE : All of the squealing noises, all of them, all at once.

DARKWICCAN : All of them, yeah. A basic pterodactyl screech, I think. Just kinda play the MP3 of a pterodactyl screech, and that was me in that moment. And so yeah, that panel, which again will probably have happened by the time this airs, that panel comprised of myself, Bootzncatz, wrackwonder, BaggerHeda, and we hope DreadPirateBrown. He is having to finalize his travel plans, and I’m hoping that everything works out and he’s able to join us as well, ‘cause that really gives a more diverse panel –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - really. And so I am so excited for what this will have been. I’m assuming I’m speaking in the – [laughter] But that never would have happened if wasn’t for this show, and if it wasn’t for the love that all of you guys have given us to get to this point, and it’s amazing.

DELAYNE : Blown away.

DARKWICCAN : [explosion noise] Yeah, absolutely, absolutely mind blown. And we have to send a huge shout out of thanks to all of our listeners, but also our [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

DELAYNE : Incredible.

DARKWICCAN : - and –

DELAYNE : Amazing.

DARKWICCAN : - yeah, it’s absolutely incredible, and we’re just gonna keep producing the highest quality content we can. And part of that does involve us taking a little break so we don’t burn ourselves out.

DELAYNE : Yeah. [laughter] We gotta catch up on a lot of reading.

DARKWICCAN : We gotta catch up on a lot of reading, ‘cause we gotta build up the next season of episodes. And we really wanna focus on almost completely new authors compared to this season, as much as we can. We wanna try to avoid repeats. Obviously there will be repeats, because there are some authors who are just so prolific, and just so up there, y'know, that they’re on a pedestal for us. [Delayne laughs] We’re just looking at them going [wordless singing, angel descending from heaven operatic style] y'know, so.

DELAYNE : And a little bit of jealousy that they can produce that much all the time. Just love it. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : But that’s great, that is so wonderful. Y'know, it’s wonderful thing, I think, for us to be jealous of -

DELAYNE : Right?

DARKWICCAN : - the fact that they are able to be as prolific as they are, and produce such high quality work. SO, but yeah, we’re gonna try really hard to showcase a bunch of new authors, or authors that have been around that maybe we’ve been sleeping on a little bit. And yeah, just come at it guns a-blazing. So this first season’s gonna wrap up in two episodes, and then we’ll be back to recording for our next season in early October, which means that our second season will start in early November. So we just thank you guys so much for your support, this has been a fantastic, and wonderful, and heartwarming, and mind blowing –

DELAYNE : Amazing.

DARKWICCAN : - rollercoaster ride, yeah.

DELAYNE : My vocabulary, I don’t think is as diverse as yours. [laughter] I’m just gonna stand over here, and just smile and nod and go “uh-huh, same”. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : How about over vacation I send you a thesaurus? [laughter] Okay, so I think that’s all the housekeeping we have today. So we can go to door number – or letter A, which was talking about the fic that we’re here to discuss. And the reason why I started off giving you options is because the story we’re discussing is ‘Wayhaught: Choose Your Own Story’, a choose your own adventure of a Wayhaught story written by Orange17.

DELAYNE : That was pretty clever, I gotta say. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, you like that? I always try to start the show off in some thematic way. I try, anyway, I don’t always succeed. But yeah, Orange17 came up with this brilliant idea of approaching a Wayhaught fanfiction from a choose your own adventure style of writing. So basically they sit down and they write a chapter, and then at the end of the chapter they give you a few options that you get to vote on, the readers get to vote on. Whichever gets the highest votes is what influences the next choice that’s being made at the top of the next chapter, and it is – it’s one of those things, and Delayne you and I were talking about this a little bit before we started recording – it’s one of things were it’s a great gimmick, but it only works if the writing is there to back it up.

DELAYNE : Yeah, yeah. It’s not an easy – [laughter] See, again, need the thesaurus right now. You’re right. When you have something that is a gimmick that is very unique, and different, and kinda like shiny and new, y'know, you really gotta keep up with it, with – you gotta support it, and Orange supports this writing very well.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, you gotta back it up with the talent, y'know, to go along with it. And Orange17 absolutely has that, they are a really well-rounded writer, you can tell that they are prepared for whatever choice the readers make. And it’s one of those things where it felt like, in reading the story to start off, that the readers were like, “Can we just get them together? Can we not do the slow burn? Can we just get them together?”

DELAYNE : I happened to notice that too, I was like, huh, the first two options were like, man, let’s – we need them talking – or actually, maybe those first three – yeah, and the option that won was clearly the “they need to be communicating, right now, as soon as possible”.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. “We need to get them on a date, like now-ish, that would be great”, is basically the gist of the way the readers were trying to drive the story. And what I thought was really great is that Orange took those choices and used those choices, but still didn’t rush the narrative. Still allowed the narrative to flow naturally, while satisfying, y'know, what readers wanted, but without making it feel like things were being rushed. And that’s hard. That’s not easy to do, especially when you have readers really kind of breathing down you neck. I think Orange probably understands how Emily Andras feels. [Delayne laughs] To a point.

DELAYNE : I actually did make notes about that one option where when they first go for coffee. Or am I getting too far ahead of myself?

DARKWICCAN : No, no, go ahead, go for it, dive in.

DELAYNE : Okay, yeah. So they finally meet for that coffee, which is canon. ‘Cause that’s the other thing, the story y'know it starts in the canon, when they first meet, and then of course it veers according to the votes by the reader. But it’s still, y'know, kind of anchors in the canon scenes, and when they finally go for coffee, and Waverly leaves her planner, and everyone of course votes, “Go, run after her, get it to her right now”, and Waverly still drives away. I loved that.

DARKWICCAN : Right, yeah, the readers were like, “Make her chase after her, make her chase after her, she’s gotta stop her”, and it was one of those situations where yeah Waverly was just a little faster than Nicole was, and y'know I love the fact that Waverly looks in the rearview mirror and sees Nicole kind of running after her, and goes, “Well that’s odd”. Like, stop that car!

DELAYNE : [laughter] Right? ‘Cause the wording, and the option – the wording in the option is, “Run after Waverly and attempt to catch her”. It didn’t say –

DARKWICCAN : Key word: attempt.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [Delayne laughs] So, you have to – there is an element of leading that an author has to do when they’re writing this style of story, in that you don’t – it’s kind of like, it’s sort of like being a GM for a role-playing game.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : You wanna give your players options where they think, for the most part, that they have the free will to sort of affect the narrative, but you also have to really be able to control that narrative to a degree, while not frustrating your players. So I think it’s the same thing here that Orange is doing, whether they realize it or not. I mean, they might be like, y'know, a world-class DM and like this is easy-peasey for them.

DELAYNE : That would –

DARKWICCAN : - but –

DELAYNE : - I would love that. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, right? [laughter] But, I mean, yeah it’s a perfect example of, “okay, I’m going to satisfy your choice, but it’s not necessarily going to lead down the road you expect it to.

DELAYNE : Yeah. See the only time I’ve ever attempted to that it was essentially with kids, and you really, ultimately, do have to lead them. Nope, this is where you kids are going now, just so you know. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. I – oh, man – I used to – I DM’d a few, and GM’d, depending on what your – if you’re playing D&D you’re a DM, if you’re playing another RPG you’re a GM – and no, I have GM’d a few games, and I tell you what, there’s one thing. There are those players who want you to lead them, and then there are those players who are going to fight you tooth and nail, and just be completely contrary, and try to scuttle your narrative just because they find it amusing.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : And sometimes you do kinda have to grab them by the nose and go, “No, no, no, no, no, we’re going this way, deal with it”.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I had something I was gonna say. I don’t even remember. I’m looking at my notes, and my favorite thing that I’ve written here is, “Fuck Champ”.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : That’s just a true statement generally, I think.

DELAYNE : I – this might be my favorite part of this story is, y'know, ‘cause it’s the canon setting initially, to start with. But Waverly gets rid of him so much sooner. That absolutely should have happened –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, she does.

DELAYNE : - and I love that.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, it’s such a relief. It is such a relief how quickly Waverly gets rid of Champ. But I also love that it gives Nicole the opportunity to demonstrate for Waverly, purely – it’s purely demonstrative, this isn’t y'know an actual date –

DELAYNE : Right.

DARKWICCAN : - but she – it gives Nicole the opportunity to demonstrate for Waverly what a true date should be with the right person.

DELAYNE : Wait, you mean a mock date? Yeah, yeah, it’s –

DARKWICCAN : It’s a mock date.

DELAYNE : - a mock date. Oh, my gosh.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : [groan]

DARKWICCAN : That was absolutely like – oh man, when it got to the end of that date, and for just a split second Nicole’s mouth got ahead of her brain?

DELAYNE : Wait.

DARKWICCAN : I was like [gasp], oh my gosh! Y'know? [laughter] Oh, oh, this is it, this is it. And then nope, ‘cause then Nicole’s brain caught up and slowed her mouth down. Do you know what I’m talking about?

DELAYNE : No, you’re going to have clarify that one for me. You might have to –

DARKWICCAN : Okay so at the end of date Waverly says to Nicole, “And if I’ve gone on this really spectacular date, and y'know the person who took me-“ I’m paraphrasing horribly –

DELAYNE : Oh!

DARKWICCAN : “- the person who took me was really amazing, y'know, what should I do?” and Nicole’s –

DELAYNE : She gets that.

DARKWICCAN : - mouth get ahead of her brain. [Delayne laughs] Yep.

DELAYNE : I remember now. Oh, duh, kiss her – oh, wait, wait, I mean – uh…

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : I didn’t mean that, whoopsie! Boundaries, boundaries, respecting boundaries, yes.

DELAYNE : But before the date, when Waverly – we’re jumping all around here, this is great, we don’t usually jump around.

DARKWICCAN : Go for it. Well this is our – we’re choosing our own adventure, right? We’re jumping around.

DELAYNE : That seems very appropriate for this episode, isn’t it? Nice, I love it.

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely, yes.

DELAYNE : When Waverly biffs it after Nicole – they’re moving Waverly out to the homestead, and puts the boxes in the back of the truck and wipes – oh – wipes her face off with her shirt, with her tank top.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, when Nicole raised her shirt to wipe her face, yeah.

DELAYNE : [laughter] “Why did you trip, are you okay?” “I – I just tripped”, it wasn’t ‘cause of Nicole’s abs where sitting there, all sweating and gorgeous.

DARKWICCAN : Just glistening at me. Yeah. [laughter] Let’s be honest, if Nicole were to do that in the actual show, I think there would just be a collective biffing of lesbians and queer women just across the world.

DELAYNE : They would lose –

DARKWICCAN : Everyone would die.

DELAYNE : - their shit. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter] Oh, yeah. I remember there was that photo, that Instagram photo from season two, when they were filming and there were in the middle of like doing a training session for a fight sequence, and Domonique and Kat like took a jumping in the air photo they posted onto Instagram. And both of them were wearing shirts that were baring their middles. And I think just there was a collective, massive death. [Delayne laughs] Just the fandom, people just died.

DELAYNE : Oh. This fandom dies a lot, doesn’t it?

DARKWICCAN : This fandom dies a lot, and is resurrected a lot. You wanna know why?

DELAYNE : Because it’s the best fandom ever.

DARKWICCAN : And we’re the unkillable gays.

DELAYNE : [laughter] [slaps leg] I love it. I love it!

DARKWICCAN : Yes. [laughter] But yeah, so jumping back to the reason why we’re here. [laughter] Which is ostensibly to talk about this incredible fiction. I really do enjoy Orange’s version of Nicole. It is very much in line with canon, she is very sweet and thoughtful, but it’s not over-done. It’s not like she’s this perfect white knight, y'know, in shining Stetson. [Delayne laughs] She really – you know what I mean, like I think there are some fictions out there that are so idealistic that it gets a little bit cloying, y'know?

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : But really –

DELAYNE : I see what you’re seeing.

DARKWICCAN : - but really this – yeah, yeah – this Nicole is true to season one Nicole, y'know – that’s the interesting thing. I’m wondering as we see more and more of Nicole y'know we can add elements of season two Nicole, and now we’re getting season three in, because Orange hasn’t finished the story yet. It’ll be interesting to see if these new bit of information that we’re going to be learning about Nicole – we do know that there’s like a darker element that’s going to come into play – I’m gonna be really interested to see how Nicole changes, or not so much changes, as reveals more about her character. I’m very interested to see that, I’m interested to see how it affects storytelling. Of all authors, of course, but really, really with Orange and this story because not only is she pulling from canon, but she’s also relying heavily on the influence of the audience at the same time, so –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - that’s going to be pretty interesting.

DELAYNE : Because the audience is also gonna see it and be affected, and probably would maybe chose different options once they see season three –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. I almost wonder how much there is left in the story, y'know, because the – Orange left it off at chapter twelve, sort of resolving the whole will-they-won’t-they, right? So I’m wondering how many more sort of major moments they’re gonna wanna hit before they call it done. Like how far is this going, y'know what I mean?

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Like, is this just going to perpetual, or is there an end in sight? It’s really hard to tell with this, y'know, because again it is a chose your own adventure, so I’m sure that if the readers had a choice it would just continue on.

DELAYNE : Right, yeah, I was gonna say if you give them the choice they’d be like, “no, no, it will never end, it’s a never-ending story”.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] You can never leave, muwhahaha. [Delayne laughs]

DELAYNE : One thing that I like that Orange does is between the chapters how we switch back and forth between points of view. And it – when they first go for coffee. I keep going back to that scene, apparently.

DARKWICCAN : It stuck with you, clearly.

DELAYNE : Or maybe ‘cause on my glance through that was the last thing I’d read. [laughter] But, y'know, when it starts out we’re in Nicole’s point of view, and she’s worrying about – ‘cause Waverly’s still with Champ at this point – she’s worried about, because Champ is a douche, and it’s clearly concerning for Nicole that he is such a douche. And y'know she kinda goes all stoic, and then we switch to Waverly’s point of view, and how Waverly is misreading Nicole’s shifted mood. So I do like that we jump back and forth, because we also get to see the misunderstanding, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, we get to see inside their heads. We get to kind of twig into what’s going on in each of their mutual thought processes. And I do really love it when author’s do that. That’s always really enjoyable because while writing from one specific character’s point of view for the duration of the story is a lot of fun and can be really insightful and the right choice for that story, I do also really love it when we get to –

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - kind of go back and forth, like you’re saying, because it helps to answer questions, y'know. We’re not left wondering, “gosh I wonder what they were thinking in that moment”, because the author will tell us. It’s like, oh, thanks, okay, great.

DELAYNE : And it’s a way to do it without seeming like, y'know, if you’re getting into both heads at once, y'know I think it’s easier to write to stay in one, and then jump to another, instead of kinda incorporate all at the same time. But now we’re getting into like technical writing styles and stuff. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : But y'know that makes sense, though, especially for this story, because again, because so much of the direction is dictated by the readers there needs to be a high level of ability and skill with the technical side of the writing. And it’s never confusing whom – or whose eyes we’re seeing through when Orange is writing, and they don’t mix up the points of view, they do make a very clear break between, y'know, Waverly and Nicole, and going back and forth. It’s never – I was never once confused about –

DELAYNE : Right.

DARKWICCAN : - whose eyes we were seeing through in that moment.

DELAYNE : And that’s just good writing.

DARKWICCAN : That’s just good writing, yeah. Again, y'know, if you have a gimmick, you gotta be able to support it, and Orange absolutely does that, here. I haven’t really seen a single scenario up to these twelve chapters where it’s felt like a ball got dropped.

DELAYNE : Yeah, okay.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, that was a hesitant. Do you disagree?

DELAYNE : No, I’m – my brain went into going through the chapters, and I’m like, oh, yeah, I –

DARKWICCAN : It’s okay, you can choose your own words.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I’m terrible at choosing my own words, aren’t you aware of this by now? I’ve kind of run out of notes, I don’t have much about the later chapters. Oh, well, actually I do have a favorite line. As Waverly’s preparing for the mock date, and freaking out about what to wear, and Wynonna says, “Well, tell me how this isn’t a real date.”

DARKWICCAN : And Waverly doesn’t really have an immediate answer, does she?

DELAYNE : [laughter] She’s like, “Huh, well…” y'know she kinda pauses, like, “Well what would you think if it was a – if I wanted it to be a date?” Of course Wynonna is like, “Uh, it’s fine by me, I don’t care who you date as long as it’s not Champ.” [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And that’s one thing that, again, we get the chance to explore, not her relationship with Champ, but her relationship with Wynonna. The fact that this Wynonna is not nearly as oblivious to Waverly being interested in, or attracted to, Nicole, as the Wynonna from canon is. And I think that was a pretty wise choice.

DELAYNE : It works well in this story because if – especially that scene, y'know, they really are bonding, and I can’t imagine Wynonna being like, “Oh, sure, you’re going on a mock date and freaking about your clothes you’re choosing. Why?” Like, I just doesn’t make sense to me, I guess. And you know I love me some oblivious Wynonna. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : I know, I know. But yeah, I think for this story it absolutely works that Wynonna is more attuned to Waverly, that there is a clearer closeness between the pair of them then there was in first half of season one of the actual show.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So that’s nice. I also like the domesticity that Orange gives is, not only with the freak out of, “Oh gosh what I am gonna wear on this fake date”, but also when Waverly spends time at Nicole’s house, before they’re together, and Waverly – I can’t remember the exact circumstances – but for some reason or other Waverly needs a change of clothes, and so she is wearing one of Nicole’s hoodies, and of course looking absolutely adorable in it. And I just love Nicole’s reaction to seeing Waverly in her hoody, and I love how Waverly just loved being in Nicole’s hoody, [Delayne laughs] and she couldn’t quite place the reason why - just yet. She’s was gonna get there, she was gonna get there, but she couldn’t quite – she just knew that she just felt warm and safe and she loved y'know the – it was a comfort.

So I just really loved those sweet little kind of domestic moments. I am such a sucker for domestic Wayhaught, and let me tell you what, I am so looking forward to season three domestic Wayhaught, oh, my gosh.

DELAYNE : Yes! Yes, yes, yes. Definitely with you there.

DARKWICCAN : But yeah, I kinda think that we’ve gone the rabbit hole as much as we possibly can without talking to the author and getting some questions answered. What do you think?

DELAYNE : I think we’re on the right track, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Well luckily I did reach out to Orange, and gave them three options. [Delayne laughs] I said they can either – they can chose to come on the show, or come on the show, or the third option, which I think caught them off guard, which was come on the show. [Delayne laughs] But they – they ended up going with the middle one, so – [Delayne laughs] so they’ll be joining us for segment two today, so we can sit them down and make them make even more choices, and answer some questions. But before we do that, we do have to introduce this week’s [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Vagrant Song (Midwest) (Instrumental Version) by Ryan Ike

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody and welcome back to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my fabulous co-host –

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : We have the incredible, the creative, the mastermind behind the ‘Wayhaught: Choose Your Own Story’ story, the one and only Orange17. Who we’re gonna call Orange, we’re just gonna drop that 17 right off. Orange, welcome to the show.

ORANGE : Thanks for having me.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, thrilling to have you. [long pause] [laughter] Now, now, don’t everybody talk at once now. Don’t everybody talk at once.

DELAYNE : I love it when we start interviews like this, it’s like – I dunnno.

[laughter]

ORANGE : Hey I think I might fall flat after that introduction, that’s a lot to live up to, so.

DARKWICCAN : Hey, listen, there’s one thing I do on this show: I speak the truth.

DELAYNE : She does.

DARKWICCAN : And, yeah.

DELAYNE : Hallelujah.

DARKWICCAN : I do. Yeah. A woman, yes. [Delayne laughs] So, Orange… [laughter] it’s a delight having on you on the show with us today. How did you get involved in fanfiction, and what drew you to _Wynonna Earp_ specifically?

ORANGE : So I’m really new to all of this, actually, I just started reading fanfiction about two years ago. I started reading for another fandom. I just sort of stumbled across a link to a _Harry Potter_ one, unfortunately, and got sucked in. [Delayne laughs] Yeah. It was a good fall, but maybe regrettable in some ways. But - and then my girlfriend got into _Wynonna Earp_ pretty early on, I wanna say like mid-season one, but for the both the first season and the second season I was working on Friday night, so I would come in about, like, halfway through an episode, and was just thoroughly confused every time I would see like [laughter] y'know, characters without eyes, people just blowing fire out their mouth, just –

DARKWICCAN : Better than fire out other places.

ORANGE : That’s very true. But I was so, so confused, and she tried to explain it to me, and I would get more lost. Like I remember the unfortunate hot tub scene with Waverly and Rosita. I thought Rosita was Nicole’s girlfriend the first time I saw it. [Delayne laughs] That’s how little I understood what was happening. But we were on vacation during the season two finale and I watched the whole thing with her, and at the end you see, of course, y'know, Nicole and Waverly giving away Alice, and I was immediately hooked, I was like, “Wait, what is this? What have you been watching this whole time?” And we kind of binge watched all of it really quickly. And then I got into reading for the fandom, and then writing back in January, I guess.

DARKWICCAN : So it was sort of a long courtship with a whirlwind romance at the end?

ORANGE : Yeah, pretty much, yeah. [laughter] I was so confused. I kept asking all these questions, and just absolutely driving her nuts. But I tried, I tried. Apparently I just needed to watch a whole episode without interruption. [laughter]

DELAYNE : That had to have been really confusing. I had sort of a similar experience in watching _Buffy_ , and I missed a whole bunch, and then suddenly I’m like, “what is going on here?” So I understand you, like, yeah. It can be really confusing when you’re only catching bits and pieces.

ORANGE : Yeah. Pro-tip: if you’re trying to convince somebody to get into the show, don’t start the episodes half-way through. It won’t work. [Delayne laughs] Probably.

DARKWICCAN : That is very, very wise, very wise advice.

DELAYNE : I think that would pretty much be any show, generally.

DARKWICCAN : Well no, not necessarily. [Delayne laughs] I mean, there are some shows where they don’t really get going until halfway through, so.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Okay.

DARKWICCAN : _Wynonna Earp_ is not one of those shows.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Well sometimes if you just provide certain scenes, that will tend to get people.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, absolutely. For instance; the couch scene could probably [Delayne laughs] work.

DELAYNE : Yeah. If we started there, yeah.

ORANGE : Yeah, I don’t know how I missed that, unfortunately. That might have helped.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that does happen hallway through the episode, so.

[laughter]

ORANGE : Maybe I was running late that day.

DARKWICCAN : I’m just trying to imagine Rosita as Nicole’s girlfriend, and outside of like fanfic scenarios that is a trip, man.

ORANGE : I wish I could explain to you the look on her face when I asked that question. She was thoroughly appalled.

DARKWICCAN : Like, if only you had had your camera open. Like, hold on a second, click, saving that one.

ORANGE : That side-eye was on point, for sure.

DELAYNE : I’m curious; what inspired you to do this fic with the people choosing and voting?

ORANGE : It was sort of a couple things sort of all coming to a head. I was finishing another fic, and was brainstorming and thinking through what I wanted to do next, and I was caught sort of at a dead end. Though about taking on prompts, I really just didn’t know what I was gonna do, but I wanted to keep writing, and so I was at one point thinking about stuff I like to read, and somehow got on a brain tangent of chose your own adventure stories, ‘cause I was a fan of them as a kid. And I started looking through AO3 I was like, oh, no one’s done one for _Wynonna Earp_. Could I do one? Probably not. But I sort of just tabled it, and eventually just really wanted to do it, so I was like, alright, this might be terrible, it might implode after about two chapters, but let me just try it. I would have loved to do it –

DELAYNE : Well, we’re glad you did.

ORANGE : I’m glad, I really can’t believe that it’s twelve chapters in, I guess - yeah, I think it’s twelve at this point. It just, it blows my mind on so many levels.

DARKWICCAN : See, when you were talking about how you had only seen essentially the episodes from the mid-way point on, and it had left you really, really confused, for a second I was like, “Oh, she chose to write a choose your own adventure so people could explain to her what’s going on”. [laughter]

ORANGE : Once I saw the first half of the episodes, I didn’t like what was going on, I decided I wanted to change it, so that’s how we got here.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : I guess I could see, yeah, your experience in viewing it, how it might make the way you do the story a lot more fun.

ORANGE : Yeah, maybe.

DARKWICCAN : Well, I’ve gotta ask, for each chapter - with a couple of exceptions – for each chapter you generally come up with at least three options for readers to vote one. How much planning are you putting into each option in advance? Or is that you’re just going, “Well, we’ll just see what they pick, and I’ll just fly by the seat of my pants and see what happens”?

ORANGE : Mostly the latter. [laughter] Really, really little planning. I will say it varied from chapter to chapter, where there’s some where I’m like, all three of these options, I have all of the ideas as to where it would go. Others it’s like – I like all of these, they’re intriguing. Where it would go next, I have really no idea, but let’s see what people wanna do. And just sort of go with it once people pick, essentially. But it does help, usually – I think for almost all the chapters pretty early on there’s been a clear consensus as to what’s gonna win within a couple days of it posting. So then I can start to like mull over before I sit down to write what I might do, or what I don’t wanna do with that option, if that makes sense.

DARKWICCAN : That makes total sense, absolutely.

DELAYNE : Have you been disappointed, or maybe frustrated, with any of the choices that have been picked so far?

ORANGE : No. I think it would be a little unfair, probably, if I was, ‘cause I mean it’s contrived, in a sense, since I’m picking the options anyway. But I will say I do feel bad for some of the readers who consistently pick options that don’t win. Which happens a lot, actually. Especially early on, there were more – sort of more polarizing options, like one that’s more, like, maybe more fast-moving, versus like a slow-burn-esque option, and people – there were a couple people that would consistently pick the slow-burn options, and they never won. So I kind of – [laughter] I kinda wanted to just appease them a little bit.

But no, definitely not. I mean, if I put it up there, I’m happy with going down that road if that’s where people wanna go.

DELAYNE : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, great. Y'know, I have to say that although this story ostensibly follows the season one arc, more or less, depending on what readers are voting on, you have taken a few liberties and changed some kind of canonical elements. The one that really stood out to me the most, actually, is Wynonna, and her obliviousness, or I should say in this story the lack thereof. You’ve offered to make Wynonna far, far more astute, regarding Waverly’s interest in Nicole that what we’ve seen on the show. So how calculated was this decision?

ORANGE : It was really intentional. Well, one of the final reasons I ended up doing it was a couple people in the comments early on wrote that they wanted to see a less oblivious Wynonna. And I was already thinking about doing that anyway, I have another fc that’s solely dedicated to oblivious Wynonna that might be a little over the top. So I love oblivious Wynonna, a bit, but I also felt like I had exhausted that avenue in a lot of ways. To try and make her oblivious in this, it would feel like it would be repetitive to that.

So I did – I had already wanted to maybe at minimum keep her as oblivious as she is in canon, but when somebody said that, I was like oh, that would be really interesting. Because I had wondered before if Wynonna was at least a little bit more observant, how that would have impacted Waverly. If she would have told Wynonna about their relationship sooner, or just how that would have a domino effect, essentially. So that was really, really intriguing to examine and to write, so I decided to just go with that.

DARKWICCAN : I think it’s a great decision.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I was taking notes, just before we started, and I had got to the part where Wynonna says, “Tell me how this isn’t a real date”, and I love that line so much. Like, hello. [laughter] You’re freaking out here.

ORANGE : Yeah, really. I mean honestly if there was any sort of payoff to having her be more astute, it’s that chapter alone. To see her really build up Waverly’s confidence, and again, just for that chapter alone I’m glad I went that way.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and I think, y'know, I think you’re actually tapping into a potential – a Wynonna with potential, you know what I mean? Like we do get to see more in the later half of season two that Wynonna is more tuned in to Waverly, and to Nicole, and to their relationship to each other. Y'know, there’s the line at the end of – in the season two finale of, y'know, “I’ve got eyes, Waverly”, y'know. [Delayne laughs]

ORANGE : Please tell me when those eyes developed.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, and I mean it makes sense where at first Wynonna wasn’t particularly tuned in because she had her own crap that she was sort of overwhelmed by, but as y'know her and Waverly’s relationship firmed up a bit more, y'know, I think it’s great that you’ve tapped into that potential within Wynonna earlier on.

ORANGE : Yeah, and I think you make a really good point, too, ‘cause I’ve wondered that, too, is it really Wynonna being oblivious, or is it just this sort of whirlwind that she’s in. Becoming the heir, getting used to all of that, coming back to Purgatory, looking out for Waverly, and just all of this sort of constant change and movement. If she’s just more tunnel-visioned because of that, or if it’s really obliviousness. But…

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I think you’re right, or we’re right, or whatever [Delayne laughs] in that it is more of a tunnel vision situation, and not truly like – I think that before it was a situation were the notion of Waverly being anything other than heterosexual just didn’t occur to Wynonna at all. So that’s part of, I think, what fed into it, on the show, anyway, and then as that possibility became very, very real, y'know, and in your face, if you will, then it was like, “Oh, okay, got it, moving on”.

ORANGE : Pick on up sort of thing.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, exactly, yeah. [laughter]

DELAYNE : I’m curious if you have a general direction that this is going. Y'know, like, no matter what the options are, y'know, all roads will lead to Rome? Or is it really could end up anywhere, and you’re not sure where it’s gonna be until people vote?

ORANGE : I mean, if all roads lead to Wayhaught, then yes. [Delayne laughs] Because that’s where it’s going. And that’s not the only destination I’ve had in mind, but, I mean, beyond that y'know I really don’t have a lot of direction, or a solid idea as to where it’s going. And I didn’t early on, I just was like okay, so let me throw this out there and see what people pick, and whatever people pick it’ll evolve into maybe something crazy. And we’ll see how we get to then, essentially. But I will say with sort of where it’s at right now, I don’t – I don’t anticipate it going that much longer, probably just another couple of chapters. I can’t say I have some grand plan to bring it to some like – or some great end goal, for lack of a better word. But rather that just that I wanted to see a different way of bringing them together.

DELAYNE : I have a new favorite –

ORANGE : That was -

DELAYNE : - favorite phrase, though, now.

ORANGE : - a horrible ramble.

DELAYNE : “All roads lead to Wayhaught”. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yes. [laughter]

ORANGE : It might make a good bumper sticker. [Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : That is a great – someone needs to make a t-shirt out of that. Absolutely. But it has to have the credit to Orange here, for coming up with that, absolutely.

ORANGE : I mean the shirt could just be orange, I’m happy with that. [Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : The shirt could be orange! [laughter] The shirt could be orange, or the text could be orange, just orange in some capacity, somehow.

ORANGE : Yes, preferably bright orange, like neon, like the construction worker.

DELAYNE : Oh, hi-vis, yeah, I could wear it at work.

DARKWICCAN : There you go.

DELAYNE : I like it. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : And you could have the text in reflective tape.

ORANGE : Safety first, guys, safety first. [Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : Absolutely. Safety first while Wayhaughting.

ORANGE : Don’t Wayhaught and drive?

DELAYNE : [wheezing laughter] Oh, my god.

DARKWICCAN : I think we’ve killed Delayne.

ORANGE : Sorry.

DARKWICCAN : It’s like –

DELAYNE : Yeah, uh-huh, fine.

DARKWICCAN : You alright there?

DELAYNE : Oh, yeah, water.

DARKWICCAN : Drink of water? Okay? Okay. I had something I was gonna say and it’s completely gone now.

DELAYNE : I do that to people, it’s okay, it happens.

DARKWICCAN : Pigging-backing off of Delayne’s question; how much would you say that you’re purposefully leading the readers to choose the option that you would prefer that they take?

ORANGE : Well, with one exception, I would hope very little. And I’ll explain the one exception, too. But I mean I’m sure I’m inadvertently steering folks one way or another, y'know, I said earlier a lot of people were picking the more fast-moving options early on, and maybe that’s ‘cause I was going at a slower pace and people were trying to speed me up a bit. But I’m really not intentionally doing it, or trying to in any way. If I put it forth as an option, I think it would be intriguing for one reason or another, or I think it would be interesting to write for one reason or another. The one exception was with their date but not a date. The options – I put forth the city date option in part to have another choice. Which sounds terrible. [laughter] But honestly I really thought the small town option would win, too, so – and I just thought that was more – not to pit Nicole and Champ against each other in any way – but I wanted Nicole to show Waverly that like just because she was in a small town doesn’t mean you can’t have excitement, or you can’t do interesting things, or you can’t sort of think outside the box.

DELAYNE : Or you can’t have a good date?

ORANGE : Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly, really just compare quality of people. And company, maybe. But everyone really wanted that city date, and I did comment to a couple of people, I was like, “I’m sort of pulling for the other option, but if we do this it’s okay”. And I will say I’ve saved my options – like, my notes for other options in case I ever want to come back to it for whatever reason, and I actually did for that particular one what I’d put forth for their sort of small town date, I used part of it. Where Nicole took Waverly out to watch the sunset, that was gonna be part of their not a date earlier on. And I really wanted to use that.

DELAYNE : I saw that note, and I like that you had: a) mentioned it; and b) done it.

ORANGE : Yeah, I had a lot of notes on it, actually. Because I couldn’t’ turn my brain off [laughter] of it for a bit, and I didn’t want all that work to go to waste, so I was like there’s gonna be an opportunity, I’m sure, at some point. And no, I didn’t deliberately kill Shorty just to bring that up. That’s not where I was going, at all, at all.

DELAYNE : You were connecting it to the canon, weren’t you? That’s what I assumed.

ORANGE : A little bit, yeah, a little bit.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

ORANGE : Of course it was connecting to canon. I don’t know why earlier – well, so when I first started the fic, actually, a family friend of ours had passed away, so I was thinking a lot about different things related to that, and that was part of why I wanted to make sure I brought up that canon reference, because I was just going through something similar, so I felt like I could really relate to how maybe Wynonna and Waverly would have felt in that situation. Maybe not as much Wynonna, but how Waverly would have felt, for sure.

DELAYNE : Wow.

DARKWICCAN : Well I think it’s, y'know, that’s also a great catharsis, to be able to kind of bring sort of personal tragedy and to sort of work through it in a fictional space.

ORANGE : Yeah, yeah, definitely.

DARKWICCAN : So you say that you think that you’ve got a couple or so chapters left in this piece. You did sort of leave it a little while back, you sort of came to a stopping point after you’d wrapped up the initial sort of will-they-won’t-they with Waverly and Nicole with a definite yep, they will. Has there been a thread of plot that been sort of stringing your storytelling along that you are getting to a point where you need to resolve it, or is it really just more that the plot is the progression of Waverly and Nicole’s relationship?

ORANGE : At this point I would say the plot is really just the evolution of their relationship. And I think there’s a couple other milestones I would wanna hit before I wrapped it up totally. I will say earlier on I did have sort of this small thought as to other plotlines, but one of the sort of resolutions I had to make with myself very early on with this was to not get super attached to any idea I might have, or any possible storyline because it just may not be natural based on whatever options are chosen. And I really didn’t wanna try to force things if I could avoid it. So I did create in my notes and in my brain different backstory pieces that if they came up, they came up, that could maybe fuel a plot a little bit. But in the end I really didn’t think – I didn’t think that it made the most sense to do that, because I felt like it would get sort of torn, if that makes sense. That your focus would get sort of spilt from them, to this other plot that I didn’t think I had developed enough to really justify doing that.

DARKWICCAN : Gotcha. That makes sense, that absolutely makes sense.

DELAYNE : You actually sound like a – like a DM for a D&D game. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Took the words right out of my mouth, Delayne.

ORANGE : I’ve never played the game, but maybe in a past life I did, or something, or I’m channeling somebody right now who did.

DELAYNE : I had done some research into – ‘cause I’d gotten a game for the boys, and I was gonna try and DM for them, and so I was reading up about it, and yeah, you can plan, you can have this elaborate thing, and then the people might just do whatever and you have no control, so.

DARKWICCAN : So do you recall, Orange, what your – did you have a favorite choose your own adventure?

ORANGE : No. I was trying to look, actually, before this, and the only thing I could pull off that I remembered was this traumatizing death one, which was like a – [laughter] really it stuck with me. It was like an Animorphs choose your own – a take on a chose your own adventure. I don’t know if you guys read those at all.

DARKWICCAN : No.

ORANGE : It’s almost like –

DELAYNE : Nope. I think we’re a little older.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

ORANGE : They’re almost like – if you read _Harry Potter_ , they’re almost like – oh, I’m not gonna be able to think of the word right now – the people who can shift into animals?

DARKWICCAN : Oh, Animagus.

ORANGE : Yes. Basically, that’s what they are, but they’re born with that ability, and they reach it at like a certain age, to be able to just immediately evolve into a particular animal. And they do it for heroic things, essentially. I feel like it’s more complicated than that, but that’s the general gist that I remember. And –

DARKWICCAN : The children’s guide to A/B/O fiction. Anyway.

[laughter]

ORANGE : I mean, maybe that’s how people got started with it. Start ‘em young.

DARKWICCAN : Y'know? I mean, it’s possible. [laughter] The origin of the furries, huh?

DELAYNE : Again, just so you know, I’m dead.

DARKWICCAN : What did you say, Delayne?

DELAYNE : I’m totally –

DARKWICCAN : Totally dead?

DELAYNE : Totally dead. Oh, my god.

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] Well I need to revive you, we gotta bring you back to life because you have one more duty to undertake before we can allow you to stay totally dead.

DELAYNE : Then I go back to being dead? Is that…?

DARKWICCAN : Then you can go back to being dead. Right now you’re just mostly dead.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I’m so happy.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. [laughter]

DELAYNE : Alright. So, you are stranded on a desert island, and can have only one fanfic to read. What is it?

ORANGE : You guys are gonna kill me. Okay, I’ve literally made up my mind on the spot. ‘Cause I’m torn between four different things, but I’ll go with the first _Wynonna Earp_ fanfic that I read, which was ‘Guardian/Angel’ by NeedyLoneWolf.

DARKWICCAN : 'Guardian/Angel’ by NeedyLoneWolf?

ORANGE : Correct.

DARKWICCAN : And what about this piece captured your attention?

ORANGE : SO it’s a – man, I don’t even know how to described it. It’s set sort of into the future, where it’s Alice reading Nicole’s diary on what happened in Purgatory, essentially. And I was just really hooked by it, it’s really well written, and I like the storyline a lot. It does, for the most part, fit into canon, and then sort of speculative after season two. But it’s really great, and, yeah. I haven’t read it since it ended at the end of last fall, give or take, but I do need to go back and re-read it, it’s really great, and it’s on my to-read list that keeps growing exponentially, it seems like. But I’ll get there, I promise.

DARKWICCAN : We can relate.

DELAYNE : Yes. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Throughly relate.

ORANGE : I feel like I’m preaching to the choir, and maybe shouldn’t be.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter]

ORANGE : To you guys.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so 'Guardian/Angel’ by NeedyLoneWolf. We will absolutely be sure to provide a link to that so that our listeners get a chance to check that and add it to their extensive reading list as well.

ORANGE : You guys are just making everybody’s problems grow.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, mhm, that’s what we’re here for, absolutely, one hundred percent. All fic, all the time.

DELAYNE : [laughter] That should be our mantra: “All fic, all the time”.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

ORANGE : Maybe you guys should make t-shirts, and put that on.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, there we go. EFA Podcast: All Fic, All The Time.

DELAYNE : It’s our new tagline.

DARKWICCAN : Well, Orange, thank you so much for coming on and chatting with us today. It has been a delightful adventure to choose to spend this afternoon with you.

ORANGE : It was really nice talking to you guys, too.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for joining us. Tremendous thanks to Orange17 for joining us to discuss their "WayHaught: Choose Your Own Story" AU. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Undiscovered Waters by Alec Holowka; Vagrant Song (Midwest) (Instrumental Version) by Ryan Ike; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast


	29. First Position

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This week on the podcast DW and Delayne explore what it's like to see through someone else's eyes as they share their favorite First Person POV fics! Then they sit down with author loveisgravity to chat about their work.

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/first-position)

 

Read the fics!

 

[Shit. I'm In Trouble](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7378375). by Eletoile

 

[Our (Wayhaught) Cute Meet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13283925) by loveisgravity

 

Episode Artwork by: [Chantal Zeegers](http://youareavision.tumblr.com/)

 

 

 

loveisgravity's Desert Island Fic: '[Find a Home, Lonely Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14968634)' by tigerlo

 

Transcript for the Deaf an HOH by Flying Fanatic!

 

EFA Episode 29 - First Position

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to the penultimate episode of season one of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me on this ride all the all way to the end is my lovely co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And this week we decided that we wanted to get into the shoes of a _Wynonna Earp_  character, and the only way we could figure to do that was to read some first person point of view fics.

DELAYNE : Well said.

DARKWICCAN : Thank you. Yeah, the thing is about first person POV fics is they kinda get a bad name.

DELAYNE : There have been a few – not necessarily in this fandom - but y'know in the past that once I start reading and seeing oh, it’s first person, I might give this a pass and search for something else for now.

DARKWICCAN : Well first person – yeah, I mean it’s a tricky style to write, because – especially, I think, especially with fanfiction. Not as much, I think, with original fiction, but with fanfiction there’s this weird sort of line that you’re walking when you’re writing from first person, because there is an element of, I dunno, I don’t think Mary Sue is the right term, but it’s the only term that’s coming to mind, if you know what I mean?

DELAYNE : Yes, I understand, I getcha. Well, I mean, an author really is fully immersing themselves in the character. It’s not always a Mary Sue, but yeah, I mean they are straight up participating in the story.

DARKWICCAN : Right. Yeah, right, there’s a tendency, however unintentional, in first person POV fics for the authors to really put themselves into the character, as opposed to allowing the character to stand on its own merits based on, y'know, it’s canonical – or their canonical – sort of development, right? And I don’t mean development as in plot, I mean development as in personality, core beliefs, things like that.

DELAYNE : Yeah, well said.

DARKWICCAN : Thank you. I’m on a roll with the “well said”s tonight.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Can you tell it’s been a long day? Anyway.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Well, I think we both had a long day today.

DELAYNE : True, very true. You actually do a lot. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : But, so, yeah, the tendency is for quite a few readers out there is when they click through on a new title, and they start reading, and they realize, oh gosh, this is first person, like Delayne was saying, there’s a tendency to go, “Eh. I’m out. I don’t want”.

DELAYNE : Maybe later.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, maybe I’ll come back around to this, yeah. But the fact of the matter is that there are quite a few very, very well done first person fics. And we today are gonna focus on two specifically that I think are very close to bar-setting, quite honestly. In so far as if you’re gonna tackle a first person point of view, this is the level of writing that we really need to see, for us to become invested in it.

DELAYNE : Yeah, if you hadn’t have said, hey, here’s our first person ones that we need to go read”, I wouldn’t have gotten into it, and I’m so glad I did because these two fics are absolutely fantastic.

DARKWICCAN : They are really, really terrific. And the thing that they both have in common is an element of realism that is brought into play. And both of them are high school – well, no, that’s not true. They’re both school based. One is a high school AU, and one is a college AU.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : So that’s why I was thinking school, and I sort of mentally went zzrph, and merged them into one plave. [Delayne laughs] It happens, my brain does short circuit. I read a lot of fic, you guys. [laughter]

DELAYNE : You really do. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : I really do. Which is why we’re all here. But – [laughter] but yeah, they both come across as very realistic, and not over-done, even though both of these fics do have high levels of emotion, and in some cases self-imposed high stakes. One of those things where if you’re the third party, on the outside looking in, you’re going, “Well, you’re just doing that to yourself. Really, you could solve this problem if you stop torturing yourself”. But to the person y'know living in that self-torture, it is very – it’s a big feeling. But the great thing about both of these stories is neither of them tips the scale into melodrama, which gets really - [Delayne laughs] That’s right, I said melodrama. Which I think is where most first person fics, really, is where they go wrong, is they really do –

DELAYNE : Over-do it?

DARKWICCAN : - fall into their own – over-do, yeah. They over-do it, yeah, yeah. So let’s talk about the first one.

DELAYNE : Okay.

DARKWICCAN : Alright, let’s do this, let’s dive in, feet first, ‘cause we’re getting into the shoes –

DELAYNE : [laughter] Brilliant.

DARKWICCAN : - of one Nicole Haught. Thank you, I – sometimes when I’m really exhausted is when I’m the best off the cuff, I’ll be honest. [Delayne laughs] ‘Cause my mental filter is just not functioning at full, so it’s like the brain thinks it, the mouth says it. But – so let’s dive into this first one, which is called ‘Shit. I’m In Trouble’, and it’s by the author Eletoile. We may be mispronouncing that, I apologize humongously if I am, or we do. It just looks like Eletoile, I have tried to gurgle – [Delayne laughs] yes, gurgle terms worch [ph], which is nowhere near as effective as Google translate, to try to get pronunciation on it. [Delayne laughs] Delayne and I are a little punch drunk tonight, you guys. [Delayne laughs] We’ll give Delayne a moment to pull herself back together.

DELAYNE : Yeah, no, the coughing fits begin. Alright, so, like you’ve already mentioned, we’re first person, through Nicole.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. We are looking through Nicole’s eyes here, and this is a typical, Nicole has moved to Purgatory to finish out her high school career set-up. That’s okay, that’s okay. Hey, the framework works, y'know. If it didn’t work so well, it wouldn’t be used as much, and the fact of the matter is, when it’s used uniquely, and done exceedingly well, it doesn’t matter how many others have come before it.

DELAYNE : Truth. Trying to vary up my words. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter] So, yes, Nicole and her mom, single mom, have moved to Purgatory for Nicole’s kinda last couple of years of high school, and they moved because of some issues that happened at Nicole’s last school.

DELAYNE : Which sounds familiar. Wait, we have seen this before. But not quite to the extent of –

DARKWICCAN : We have seen this before, but, y'know, it does happen.

DELAYNE : Well, first of all, Nicole’s mother is absolutely hilarious.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, my gosh, I love Nicole’s mom. Nicole’s mom [Delayne laughs] is basically Wynonna, as far as personality, as far as personality. Now, it’s not Wynonna, she’s not Wynonna, but as far as personality goes, she’s essentially the Wynonna of this piece.

DELAYNE : Yeah, because the back and forth between Nicole and her mother killed me. I mean, I – multiple times. Literal, laughing out loud, and people staring at me like I was crazy.

DARKWICCAN : And me too. And I love the relationship between Nicole and her mom. It’s such a lovely, funny, warm, kind of almost – they’re almost on the same level with each other. I mean, you still get that Nicole’s mom, y'know, she’s the mom, y'know, so ultimately –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - y'know, what she says is gonna go until Nicole’s and adult and has moved out, but regardless of that, they really do communicate on almost equal footing, and the way they communicate is by busting each other’s chops.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Yeah, I – if there’s something to make fun of, I mean, they are – they are making fun of it. Nicole’s mom’s movie obsession? Tom Cruise?

DARKWICCAN : Yes, Tom Cruise movie obsession. Yes. Absolutely love that. Also love the fact that Nicole’s mom completely backs her on, y'know, the fact that she’s gay, and supports her, y'know, in however she wants to express herself. It’s really a no-judgment zone with her mom, which I think is really great. I love the fact that when Nicole introduces Waverly to her mother for the first time, after like Waverly’s leaving the room, Nicole’s mom kinda gives her little elbow and goes, “She’s cute”.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : Right, but Nicole wasn’t out, then, not that y'know her mom of course – we find out later that, yes, her mother knew, and that’s –

DARKWICCAN : Right.

DELAYNE : - actually to bring back around, that is why they left the old school, is because Nicole couldn’t deny that she was gay, so that’s what the rumors started, and she kinda had no friends, so Mama’s like, “cool, let’s just go try somewhere new”.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. And, like you say, Nicole at that point in the story wasn’t out yet, but of course her mom – yeah, her mom’s just awesome, I love Nicole – if you read this story for no other reason, read it for Nicole’s mom. Quite honestly –

DELAYNE : Right.

DARKWICCAN : - she is such a spectacular original character, I loves her.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Do we wanna talk about the not so happy part?

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, we –

DELAYNE : Waverly’s relationship with her family.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So whereas Nicole and her mom have this terrific relationship, Waverly’s not in a good situation at home.

DELAYNE : Yeah. I mean, she – when she invites herself over to Nicole’s to do homework, and it doesn’t take very long, she’s like, “oh, I kinda didn’t wanna go home”.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, yeah. And then when the –

DELAYNE : And then we find out why.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, when the gravity of the situation becomes – or I should say the reality and the gravity of the situation – becomes abundantly clear, Nicole’s immediately like, “You’re not staying here, you’re coming home with me tonight”. And not in a –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - haw, haw, haw way, in a “no, you can’t stay here because it’s unsafe, so you’re gonna sleep at me house so that you don’t get beaten by your drunkard father”. So, yeah, there are heavy things, there are heavy things. That’s not – and the thing is, again, it’s a heavy thing but it doesn’t tip over into melodrama, it’s still has the air of believability about it. Eletoile does not present it in a way that’s over the top, she just – or they, I should say – just present as this is the situation, this is the fact of Waverly’s life, and this is how Nicole is reacting to that, so.

DELAYNE : Yeah. And Nicole and her mother do what I have actually seen done before. Y'know, I had a friend that wasn’t – their parents kicked them out, but not ‘cause they were drunken bastards, but either way, y'know, friends pretty much, y'know, take other – I’ve known many families who have taken other kids in, like, “we get it, your parents are terrible, just stay with us”.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : And, again, I love Nicole’s mom for stepping up.

DELAYNE : Oh, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : She stepped up. [laughter] She had a little chat with Mr. Earp.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and, y'know, I love Waverly and Nicole’s relationship in this. It does feel like a high school, y'know, romance, in that the feelings are very intense, and they have eyes only for each other, and they’re practically inseparable, and you think that that’s gonna be, y'know, the riding off into the sunset happy ending, but the fact of the matter is that this story is not over yet. It’s up to –

DELAYNE : No, it’s not.

DARKWICCAN : - chapter twenty-one. It’s up to chapter twenty one, and chapter twenty is a big surprise. [Delayne laughs] It is not the direction that I thought things were going in. and –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. And – but at the same time, it’s not unbelievable.

DELAYNE : Yes, that is – I’ve – [laughter] I’ve seen that before, as well.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, yeah. So, again, we don’t want to give away too much, ‘cause we really do want you to sit down and read this. We’ve given a lot of the information that happens sort of near to the beginning, early-middle of the story. It is really fun to watch Waverly and Nicole’s relationship continue to grow and evolve, especially once Nicole finally comes out, y'know, and mom was like, “we were waiting”. But it’s really –

DELAYNE : Duh.

DARKWICCAN : - really – yeah. It is a lovely, lovely story. It’s very sweet, and it’s – but, again, it’s not – expect the unexpected, right? Expect the unexpected, it’s really, really fantastic. Even if you don’t like first person point of view stories, I’m gonna tell you right now the two we’re talking about today, this one, ‘Shit. I’m In Trouble’, and the next one that we’re about to talk about, read them. If you read no other first person point of view fics, read these two stories.

DELAYNE : Agreed. And one last thing real quick –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah?

DELAYNE : - about ‘Shit. I’m In Trouble’.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

DELAYNE : I know you don’t generally read notes very often, but the summary bandit is fantastic. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : The summary bandit is hilarious. The summary – I will say this, you know me, I don’t read notes, but I did go back and read the notes, and I was like, man, I wish I had been reading these notes. [laughter]

DELAYNE : Okay, now we can move on.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, okay, so moving onto our second and final fic today. It’s ‘Our (Wayhaught) Cute Meet’ by loveisgravity. And as Delayne kind of intimated earlier, I chose both of these fics today. [Delayne laughs] Which is why I’m introducing them both.

But the interesting thing about this one is that when it first went up on AO3 I clicked on it. And normally when I start reading something and I realize it’s not formatted in the standard novel format, I will immediately click back out. And it’s not a snobbish thing, it’s because I do try to read as much as I can, almost everything on the board. There are things that I will nope out of. If I click through and the writing is atrocious I’m gonna nope out, I’m not gonna spend my time on that when I could be spending it reading something of a higher value so that I can bring those stories to you guys.

So one of the rules that we have, one of the very, very few rules that we have for EFA is that all stories must be in standard novel format in order for them to be recommended. And that’s because the standard novel format is what we’re used to reading, the layout, it’s comfortable for our eyeballs, and it’s just an easier read. So I clicked through on this one and it wasn’t formatted correctly, but by the time I realized it wasn’t formatted correctly I was so sucked in by the amazing quality of the writing otherwise, that I went, “You know what? I’m gonna keep reading this”. And I kept reading it, and kept kind of hoping that the author would ultimately shift into novel format, and they didn’t.

And after fourteen chapters – the story has a total of eighteen chapters, by the way – after fourteen chapters I sent loveisgravity a note, and I said, “I would love to recommend this on the Twitter feed, but I can’t because it’s not formatted in the standard novel format”, and I sent them a, y'know, a snippet, a picture of what novel format looks like. And I said, “If you are willing to go in and painstakingly undertake fourteen chapters’ worth of editing to get everything formatted correctly, I will absolutely recommend this on the Twitter feed and, y'know, possibly more”.

[Delayne laughs]

And they did! They went back and slowly re-formatted every single chapter while still continuing to write new work, new chapters, and let me know as soon as it was done, and I immediately recommended it on the Twitter feed, and then I was like, you know what? This work is so good, at some point – at this point we hadn’t planned out this far into the podcast – but I was like at some point I have got to have loveisgravity on the show. So –

DELAYNE : Good job.

DARKWICCAN : - so, yeah, so – thank you. I do pat myself on the back for that, I do, absolutely. ‘Cause it’s so frustrating to me when something is written really well, but I can’t recommend for like, what may seem – feel like – an arbitrary reason. It’s truly not arbitrary, but, y'know. [laughter]

So yeah, so that’s the little backstory of how we got to this point with this story, y'know, talking about it on the show and ultimately we will be talking to loveisgravity in our second segment today. So that’s all that. Let’s talk about the story itself.

DELAYNE : Right, so for a summary we have this one - of course, we like to mix it up – this time we have Waverly as our point of view.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm.

DELAYNE : And after she breaks up with Champ, y'know, she’s like, “yay, I’m single”. Not really ready for a new relationship, but then her BFF sets her up with a woman. Who, of course, is Nicole.

DARKWICCAN : That’s right.

DELAYNE : Yeah. So and this one is a college AU.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, this story takes place at a university. I’ll be honest, I don’t remember off the top of my head which university.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Nor do I.

DARKWICCAN : Because that didn’t interest me as much as the relationship between Waverly and Nicole. I thought it was really interesting that – well, I mean – this is, again, a standard tack, where we have a Waverly who is sort exploring her identity, her sexual identity, and she had mentioned in passing to her best friend Laura that she y'know did have attractions to women, but she’d never acted on them, dah, dah, dah, so of course Laura takes it upon herself to set her up on a blind date with her boyfriend’s friend from class Nicole.

DELAYNE : [laughter] The only other lesbian we know, here, we’re gonna set you up with her. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Which, y'know what, that’s so true, though. That seriously happens. That seriously happens. Oh, you think you might be gay? I know this one lesbian, let me introduce you to. See if the sparks fly, play a little lesbian [Delayne laughs] y'know love match.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Oh.

DARKWICCAN : But, I mean, and lucky for Laura, she was batting a thousand.

DELAYNE : Right? Yeah, I mean you really can’t -

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] But –

DELAYNE : - go wrong with that batch. But, yeah, she got lucky.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Interesting thing about this piece, as well, there aren’t a whole lot of canon characters. You’ve got Waverly, and you’ve got Nicole, and you’ve got mentions of –

DELAYNE : Doc and Dolls.

DARKWICCAN : - there’s a mention – Doc and Dolls, right.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : But otherwise the characters are all OCs. They’re all original.

DELAYNE : I did notice that, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : And what did you make of that choice, Delayne?

DELAYNE : [laughter] Well, I – it’s interesting, ‘cause especially – y'know, ‘cause we do have in canon we have like Chrissy as Waverly’s best friend. Well, y'know, she’s sort of portrayed as Waverly’s best friend, and that’s who usually is used in a fic to give Waverly a best friend. And –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : - but I can also sort of see why that they might not – that they went with original characters. Y'know, I had to think about it for a while, like, ‘cause when I first noticed it it was like, wow, yeah, where is everyone? [laughter] But then, y'know, as going through the story, like, y'know, having a canon character if you change it too much, y'know, you sort of – it’s the character only in name, so I think it worked in this situation to have Laura be her best friend.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. I kind of felt like loveisgravity sort of wanted these characters to stand on their own without readers coming to them with sort of a pre-conceived notion of who they are. I mean, asife from Waverly and –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - Nicole, obviously.

DELAYNE : [laughter] We have a pre-conceived notion –

DARKWICCAN : So there’s the –

DELAYNE : - that those two are meant to be together. And you know what? That’s an okay notion to have.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. That is okay, [Delayne laughs] I think we’re all okay with that idea. But yeah, I kind of got that feeling, but – so Waverly and Nicole hit it off immediately, of course they do, and –

DELAYNE : [laughter] Dimples.

DARKWICCAN : - and of course Waverly has momentary – dimples – of course Waverly has a momentary kind of, “Oh my god, what am I doing”, but they do sort of come together rather quickly. Ha ha, ha ha, not that way. [laughter] Sorry, sorry buddy. But the interesting thing is that Nicole is getting ready to head back to the Pacific Northwest, where she’s from – I wanna say the Oregon area, because she has taken and internship with the police department there while she’s on her summer break.

DELAYNE : Yeah, where she grew up.

DARKWICCAN : Where she grew up, right. So she says to Waverly right off the bat, “y'know, I’m about to go out of town. Like, literally I’m leaving town in less than thirty-six hours, so, y'know, this probably isn’t the best time to be starting anything”. But, of course, being that this is a women loving women situation, [Delayne laughs] they’re so close to a UHaul scenario by the time Nicole leaves –

DELAYNE : [laughter] I leave in twenty-four hours, now we’re officially a couple, so that’s all there is to it.

DARKWICCAN : We’re a officially a couple, here are the keys to my apartment and my car, [Delayne laughs] feel free to use them both while I am out of town.

DELAYNE : Yeah, that sounds about right.

DARKWICCAN : loveisgravity does this great job of making that whole situation feel completely authentic, and completely believable, and because we already know in our hearts, y'know, and from – that Wayhaught is endgame, we’re all just like, “Okay, sure.”

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : That’s great, yeah, get together that fast. It does happen in reality, that that happens – y'know, that does happen. But then we’ve got a Waverly left behind while Nicole is, y'know, on the other side of the country, and –

DELAYNE : Yeah, ‘cause they’re on the east coast.

DARKWICCAN : - the story does – yeah, yeah, exactly, they’re at an east coast school in the U.S.A., so then Waverly now has to deal with all of that sort of aftermath of this incredibly intense emotional high, feeling exceedingly connected to this person who is on the other side of the country from her. And not being able to see her, and while at the same time dealing with her sexual identity, is she bi, is she gay, what sort of – does she need to label herself? Is she prepared to label herself? Does she want to label herself? All of that going on plus other lesbians [Delayne laughs] and –

DELAYNE : “Plus other lesbians”. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Plus other lesbians. And so – and dealing with issues at her summer job, and I mean there’s a lot going on, it’s not just a “oh I pine for my dear one who is so far away”. [Delayne laughs] It’s not – it’s not – there is so much going on and it feels so real and so authentic, and I just – you’re in it with Waverly the whole time, and it’s just wonderful, and unlike Nicole and her mom’s relationship in ‘Shit. I’m In Trouble’. Nicole and her mom’s relationship in ‘Our (Wayhaught) Cute Meet’ is dire.

DELAYNE : Uh, it’s very full of tension.

DARKWICCAN : You – as much as you will love Nicole’s mom in ‘Shit. I’m In Trouble’, you will despise her in ‘Our (Wayhaught) Cute Meet’. I mean, utterly despise.

DELAYNE : But she looks fabulous, like a super – [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : She does.

DELAYNE : - super fabulous, super classy, older Nicole, is what comes across as.

DARKWICCAN : Yes, yes, the woman knows how to come across perfectly appointed attire, and hair that is not a – nary a strand out of place. And knowing this information should tell you a lot about the character in general.

DELAYNE : [laughter] She dresses to intimidate.

DARKWICCAN : She really does, she really, really does. Okay, well I think that we have – or, I know I’ve been dominating this conversation as I typically do, but I feel like I’ve really been dominating it, but I think we kinda covered as much as we can cover without getting into super spoiler territory.

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : Yeah, ‘cause I mean there’s a lot of details in this story, a lot of interesting bits and pieces that, y'know, compliment the story as a whole of bringing these two together.

DARKWICCAN : Okay. Well why don’t we y'know move on, so we can get into our second segment today, where we get to talk to loveisgravity, and pick their mind for all sorts of juicy information and insight into the making of this really terrific fic, which is completed. This story is complete at eighteen chapters, and it is – it’s a delight, you guys, it really is, so –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - so be sure to take some time out to check it out. So, yeah, before we dive into our second segment, we have to do our usual little bit of housekeeping, [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : Fun Festival by Erik Barone

Poorly Drawn Wynonna Earp proves that you all you need is a stick-figure and a one-liner to make excellent fan art.

Follow them on Twitter at W-E but like bad art to catch all of their hilarious and timely artworks lovingly lampooning the show we adore for not taking itself too seriously.

New cartoons post frequently so be sure to give them a follow today.

Poorly Drawn Wynonna Earp, it may be a shit show, but so are these cartoons.

ADVERTISMENT END.

MUSIC : Onsen by David Fenn

DARKWICCAN : Alright everybody and welcome back to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am still your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my amazing co-host –

DELAYNE : [laughter] Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we are super excited because joining us for this second segment today is the author of the adorable first person fic ‘Our (WayHaught) Cute Meet’, loveisgravity, who has asked us to call her Robin, which we shall. Robin, welcome to the show.

ROBIN : Hi. How are you?

DARKWICCAN : I am well, how are you today?

ROBIN : Super excited to be here.

DARKWICCAN : Are you sure? You sounded kind of like you were hesitating a little bit.

ROBIN : No, no.

DARKWICCAN : Just so everyone knows –

ROBIN : Just trying to keep my emotions in check, here.

DARKWICCAN : Just trying to play it cool?

ROBIN : Very cool, yeah, yeah, very cool.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, well we’re both – Delayne and I are both a couple of dorks, so you don’t have to worry about being too cool.

ROBIN : Alright.

DARKWICCAN : I mean, we’re here fangirling over fanfic, for heaven’s sake.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I dunno, that’s becoming a lot cooler than it used to be, so.

DARKWICCAN : It is, but you know what? We were here first.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Oh, god.

DARKWICCAN : So Robin, speaking of this whacky game of fanfiction, and the fact that yeah, it is actually becoming a bit more popular, a bit more acceptable, how did you get into it?

ROBIN : Well, actually, this is my very first piece of fanfiction, and –

DARKWICCAN : Are you serious?

ROBIN : No, no. [Delayne laughs] This is my very first one. In fact, this is my first fandom, and I was –

DARKWICCAN : What? [Delayne laughs]

ROBIN : Yeah.

DELAYNE : Newbie all around.

ROBIN : Yes, completely, in every way.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so this is your first fandom?

ROBIN : First fandom.

DARKWICCAN : _Wynonna Earp_ is your first fandom, okay.

ROBIN : Unless you count like hanging out with my friends in college and watching _X-Files_. That might have been.

DELAYNE : Depends on how involved you were, I mean if you’re –

ROBIN : Not involved, it was kinda, we all gathered on Sunday, and, yeah.

DELAYNE : Yeah, yeah, it’s not full into a fandom unless you’re buying extra magazines that have little title blurbs.

ROBIN : No, no. So, yes, this is my first fandom.

DELAYNE : Wow.

DARKWICCAN : That’s – okay. So what – how did it capture you? How did you get into _Wynonna Earp?_ What about this series just grabbed a hold of you and wouldn’t let go?

ROBIN : Well, it actually – it started through _Supergirl_ . My daughter was really into _Supergirl_ , and then when Maggie Sawyer showed up my wife and I really liked _Supergirl_ , and I think at some point I was on YouTube watching a Sanvers video and like in the queue it was like all these Wayhaught videos. I was like, “Who is Wayhaught? Like, what is this?” [Delayne laughs] So I finally clicked on one, and I watch it, and I’m like, “Aw, they’re adorable, I love this, what is this?” And so then I was – I think went to Netflix and y'know the first season was on Neftlix, and we were – actually, we were on vacation, we were at the beach, and I was like holed up in our hotel room [Delayne laughs] like watching the first season of _Wynonna Earp_ . And my wife comes up, she’s like, “What are doing? Like, we’re at the beach, let’s go outside”. And I’m like, “But if I go outside then I lose wi-FI : and I can’t watch _Wynonna Earp_ any more”. And she’s like, “Who’s _Wynonna Earp_?”. I’m like, “You gotta watch this show with me!” So then I showed it to her, and then we were both holed up in our hotel room, and – [laughter] – my daughter was like “We came to the beach!” and we’re like, “No, sorry, we’re watching T.V.”. So. [Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, my gosh, that is incredible.

ROBIN : And so a few episodes into the second season – and I know this because YouTube basically exploded with Cheerleader Waverly, and I was like, “Oh, okay. That’s – wow, okay.”

DELAYNE : [laughter] “Wow”.

ROBIN : Yeah. And so then after season two, y'know, I felt the hole. I was like, “I miss this.” And so I got on Google, and typed up Wayhaught, and there came up a whole bunch of fanfiction. I was like, [gasp] I’m a voracious reader, I love this, this is great”. Y'know? And then after a couple of months I was like, hey, I could totally do this. I could write a Wayhaught story.” And so originally the cute meet was – I’d only planned it to be like three chapters. It was gonna be like a really small, fluffy, little piece that ended with Nicole taking Waverly to the softball game and, y'know, having Doc and Dolls there with the quip, like, oh, lesbians at the softball game. [Delayne laughs] And that was gonna be it. But then the reaction that I got, like all the comments, and everything. I was like, oh, wait a minute, I could actually really do something with this story, I could do a whole lot more with this. So that’s kind of where the story –how it developed.

DARKWICCAN : And had you done any sort of – I mean, not fanfiction writing, but just fiction writing before?

ROBIN : My undergraduate degree is in creative writing for poetry, and so as a part of that I did have to take a fiction writing class, and so I did write some short stories for that class, which I enjoyed but kind of gave up after that. So I’m actually more of a poet than a fiction writer.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, I would say that your fanfiction is poetry.

DELAYNE : [laughter] I’ll agree to that.

ROBIN : Thank you.

DARKWICCAN : So you started off thinking, “Oh, I’m just gonna write this cute little, y'know, three chapter short one-off“ -

ROBIN : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - and it ended up being an eighteen chapter behemoth.

DELAYNE : Twenty-one thousand words.

DARKWICCAN : Full of feelings, and original characters, and all sorts of just true-to-life experiences. I just love the fact that _Wynonna Earp_ captured you, and your wife, so strongly –

ROBIN : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : - that you eschewed sun, sand, and surf to stay in your darkened hotel room and watch this show. I just love it.

ROBIN : Streaming Netflix.

DARKWICCAN : That’s something –

ROBIN : That’s the thing, it’s so awesome, y'know, I love the writing of it, and I was just totally sucked in, I couldn’t. I was no, I can’t leave now when there’s more episodes to watch. [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Y'know this is information that needs to get back to Emily Andras for sure.

ROBIN : Y'know, that’s another thing is, I’m actually not a big T.V. watcher, and now I’m watching sci-fi because of _Wynonna Earp_. Y'know, I’m much more of a reader than I am a watcher.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. Well, I can relate to that, absolutely. [Delayne laughs] Yeah, for sure.

DELAYNE : T.V.? What’s that? I don’t even have a T.V.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter] SO circling back around to something I started to touch on, and that is the very – the real life kind of feeling, true to life feeling within this story. You’ve really captured – you’ve really captured the overwhelming and consuming nature of young, intense love, and I’m wondering when you were writing it what steps were you taking to make sure that you were sticking to capturing really kind of almost vivid realism without tripping over into melodrama? Which can be such an easy step to take.

ROBIN : Yeah, yes it can. You know what? Honestly, when I was facing – once I mapped out the story that I ultimately told, y'know it went from being a fluff piece to “I’m gonna make this a real coming out story”, and there are real things that happen along that journey, y'know, facing coming out at work, or coming out to y'know professors at school, or friends, or family, y'know. And y'know I really feel like the only thing I can offer is honesty. Like, just complete honesty, and so y'know for good or for bad, y'know, fluffy, silly, y'know, I just try to completely honest with how I’ve faced a lot of these things, or the emotions that I had when I was dealing with this, y'know. So I just really try to be as honest as I could, without making judgment calls about it, y'know, that I start to feel like that’s up to the reader, y'know the reader can make their judgment calls, I’m just gonna be as honest in my storytelling as I can be, and leave it at that.

DARKWICCAN : Well I think that, y'know, not everyone, not everyone of course, but a good chunk of folks can relate to the intensity of feeling that Waverly has all of a sudden for this new person in her life. Especially when we were younger, y'know, again, not everybody, but I think a lot of people can point to –

DELAYNE : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - an intense – what, what, Delayne?

DELAYNE : I said, “Oh, yeah.” [laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. But, y'know can point to that intense emotional attachment that happened to another person that were getting involved with, whether it was someone they ended up staying with for the rest of their lives, or if it was just a young romance that happened and lasted a summer, a year, whatever. But ultimately, y'know, you grew up through that experience and moved onto the next one. But yeah, it’s just, oh man, everything that you’ve written, I can just picture so clearly because I’ve been there, man. [laughter]

ROBIN : We’ve all been there.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, mhm.

DELAYNE : Yeah, right at that time in college.

ROBIN : I was just trying to be really honest with what I was feeling at that time, y'know, when I was facing it for the first time. And, y'know, trying to capture that feeling, and y'know without sort of putting more into it than y'know just being honest about it, and the sort of the freaking out, and y'know consuming passion and everything, like just trying to be as honest about all that as could be.

DELAYNE : Well it came across really well, so, you did good.

DARKWICCAN : I really loved Waverly’s zero to sixty, I just loved it. I don’t know what else to say about it, it just – it was so recognizable. And I feel like I’m being very, very redundant, and I apologize, but it just – it – yeah. I’m done. [laughter] It’s very much a – I think it’s a girl, or a female’s, experience, though, right? Because you don’t really see that – and not that it doesn’t happen from the male point of view, but you don’t see it as much. Usually it’s the female who’s all in, and when you have two females it’s all in, which is why there’s the U-haul joke.

ROBIN : Right.

DARKWICCAN : With lesbians. [laughter]

ROBIN : Exactly.

DARKWICCAN : But, yeah, so I just really, I appreciated that a lot, and the thing that I appreciated it about the most, again, to be redundant, my apologies, is that it just felt very – as you have been saying – honest, and genuine, and real, and not melodramatic.

ROBIN : Thank you. Well I can say that I have personally hid in a university library, trying to hide from a crush, and, y'know, so I’ve had those experiences, y'know, and I mean, y'know, that’s often how it starts. You’re like, “I can’t deal with this, I’m gonna hide, and bury my nose in a book, and try and disappear for a while, and then you’re like, okay, this isn’t working. I actually have to confront this.”

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah. But in addition to this very authentic, genuine, realistic feeling that you have as far as Waverly’s point of view, and her emotional processes and experiences, she also has people around her, as you said, y'know coming out to family, coming out to friends, coming out to professors, and so you have got quite a lot of original characters here. We don’t really see too many canon characters, which I thought was kinda interesting.

ROBIN : I had a lot of fun with that.

DELAYNE : Yeah, I had a lot of fun reading it. And the friendships that Waverly has, y'know, it did remind me of my own college experience in a lot of ways. But I’m curious as to why you chose an original character as Waverly’s best friend? Instead of using a canon one like Chrissy, or Steph, or I think people have even used Rosita, as, y'know -

ROBIN : Right, no, absolutely.

DELAYNE : - in their fics, so.

ROBIN : Yeah, well honestly I had a very specific role that I wanted Laura to play, and I didn’t wanna be beholden to who Chrissy is in the T.V. show. Y'know, I wanted Waverly to kind of struggle with, y'know, do I come out to – like, and how do I come out to my straight best friend, who is in some ways very much like a sister. But y'know I didn’t – that was the other thing, I didn’t want Wynonna in this story either, because I thought it would be too easy for her to have a sister to turn to. And so I wanted her to have a sister-like best friend, who is straight, who’s trying really hard to be like supportive, and y'know do what she can do, and, but, y'know, it’s still – it’s a different experience, and, y'know, it’s, y'know, her understanding is gonna be different than what Waverly’s going through. And so I think that – y'know, I didn’t wanna –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

ROBIN : - be tied down to one of the T.V. characters, because I wanna create my own, and be able to kind of use that, and manipulate her in ways that, y'know, felt like fitting.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, no, that makes total sense. And I mean Laura is a very interesting, fun, unique, beautifully flawed, wonderfully well-meaning character, and I found it really interesting how she seemed to kind of run hot and cold when it came to Waverly’s relationship with Nicole. She started – y'know, she sort of framed it as being concern for her friend diving in so completely to this new relationship, but it felt like there was more to it than that. So I’m kind of curious, as you’re creating Laura, and Laura’s sort of personal conflict with Waverly’s relationship to Nicole - which she set up – what kind of factors where you bringing into play that fed into Laura’s reactions?

ROBIN : What I was trying to bring out with that is that, y'know, it’s trying to set with her – basically during her relationship with Champ, during Waverly’s relationship with Champ, Laura was her emotional support, and I wanted to sort of highlight how, y'know, especially when like when she was freaking about wanting to kiss Nicole on her couch while studying, and then she turns to Laura, and says, “Ahh, I’m freaking out” y'know. And so y'know Laura’s been her emotional support the whole time, but now that she’s met Nicole, and then she’s in a relationship, y'know, suddenly Nicole’s become her emotional support, and I think that Laura’s kinda jealous about that. I wanted – y'know, I want her to be sort of like, “Hey, wait a minute, I feel like I’m disappearing here, y'know, and you’re not hanging out with me as much, you’re not calling me as often, we’re not, y'know, we’re not the super best friends we used to be, y'know”. And, yeah, y'know, sort of blaming that on Nicole. And sort of running hot and cold because she’s kind of jealous of Nicole, and also I wanted – it was important for me to bring Laura to the woods when Waverly met Mia, and all the other lesbians out in the woods, because I wanted her to be uncomfortable, I wanted her to feel like an outsider, y'know. Laura’s sort of realizing like there’s this whole other world, and I’m not a part of this, and y'know sort of feeling like she is uncomfortable, y'know, supportive to a point, but, y'know, put me in the woods with a bunch of lesbians and now I’m not so sure.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : That sounds like a perfect situation for me, but I can see how for Laura it would be kinda like, wait a minute.

ROBIN : And Waverly having to deal with that. Like, how do deal with a friend who is – I mean, Laura really loves Waverly, she cares about her, but yet, y'know, there’s this tension, she’s supportive to a point. And y'know I mean, I’ve had that with straight friends myself, that y'know, it’s like how do you deal with that, y'know, because I know that you’re a wonderful person, but y'know the fact that you can’t handle being out at a gay bar, coming over, whatever, joining me at Pride, or doing something like that, y'know, that that makes you uncomfortably, y'know, how do I deal with that.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, man, tell me about it. [Delayne laughs] Oh, gosh. One of these days I’ll have to tell the story of my twenty-first birthday. That was full of gay panic for my friends, ‘cause I was the token gay in my group, so I was like, it’s my twenty-first birthday, I was like, go out to a gay bar, and all the girls were like, “Okay”, and the guys where like, “uuh, I’m afraid.” [Delayne laughs] I mean, there’s more to it than that, but that’s the basic story. But yeah, you’re so right, the gay experience there’s a point where, again, the majority of my friends are straight, and it sounds like that was kind of the case for you, and may still be the case, may not, but there’s this point where you just sort of hit a wall, or you just run out of things in common that you can talk about, and yeah, I can – it’s weird that I hadn’t really thought of that when I was initially reading the story, and the way that Laura was behaving. I was just getting ticked off at her.

DELAYNE : See I figured it was just down to jealously, ‘cause I’ve had a few friends that were like, “yeah, you used to hang out with us all the time, and now you’re spending all this time with this other woman”, and they just –

ROBIN : You wanna hang out with your girlfriend?

DELAYNE : They were kinda dicks about it.

ROBIN : Exactly. Yeah.

DELAYNE : And then you wanna invite your girlfriend to stuff with us? And, yeah, and it’s like, yeah, I thought that was what people did, but whatever.

ROBIN : Well that’s the other thing, I like in my own experience, I’ve just had a hard time, it’s like justifying the sexual aspect of your relationship, and so, y'know, in this story I really struggled with how much sex I would actually put into the story. And I – to the point that I included it, I included it for a lot of different reasons, but one of the reasons was because I was so sick of like straight people being like, “Oh, that’s great, you’re gay, but, ew, I don’t even wanna think about your having sex, because just so gross, and nasty, and it’s perverted, and whatever. But that’s fine for you, but I don’t even wanna like think about it”. And I’m like no, no, it’s gross and perverted, it’s actually beautiful, and loving, and important, and valuable, just like heterosexual sex is, y'know, in a committed relationship. It’s important, and so I wanted to sort of re-write that narrative and say, y'know, like this is important, it’s important to talk about, it’s important to describe in a beautiful way, because it’s not gross. And I think it’s important to say that out loud.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, man, do I agree with you there, oh, my gosh. Oh, yeah, it’s like this – it’s like it goes one of two ways, it’s like don’t think about what’s happening in my bedroom –

ROBIN : Right.

DARKWICCAN : - that’s my personal business, and at the same time it’s like why are you afraid of what’s happening in my bedroom, it doesn’t affect you.

ROBIN : Right, right. And don’t discount it, y'know –

DARKWICCAN : Exactly.

ROBIN : - and don’t devalue it, as well. Y'know, it is important, just like your relationship, y'know, whatever you’re doing, is important in your relationship.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that is a constant frustration for me is in television you’ll watch a show where there’ll be a gay ship and a straight ship, and the straight ship, they have basically full-on sex on-screen, and the gay ship, if you’re lucky, they kiss and maybe cuddle, maybe they’re in the bed, but nothing else is happening. Or they’ll roll over, and it’ll fade to black. And it’s like, I’m sorry, if we get to see this female character astride this male character… [laughter] Of course it all comes down to the comfort of the actors, and what they feel safe and okay putting on camera, but it’s like, wait a minute, hang on. Because again, that perpetuates that thing that it almost invalidates y'know gay or lesbian sex, because they won’t show it.

ROBIN : Absolutely.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, it’s so frustrating, I’m so with you there. Power to it, sister, I believe in you, ride on.

ROBIN : [laughter] Yes. So, that’s – so to the extent that there was sex in my story, I felt like it was important to include it, and be as honest about that, as well. Not just sort of the emotional side of it, but also through the physical side, I mean the reality of it, and the, y'know, trying to create a new narrative about, y'know, this is really beautiful –

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

ROBIN : - and it deserves its own time.

DARKWICCAN : But speaking of – kind of jumping back to Laura, and Laura’s discomfort in the woods with the lesbians. [laughter] I really liked how you brought in this additional character of Mia, this sort of will-she-won’t-she sort of character for Waverly to get to know, and possibly become interested in, but really kind of affirm her feelings for Nicole. I thought that was very brave choice, but really, really beautifully executed.

DELAYNE : Mia was quite a character, and as a reader it was difficult to tell what her motivations were, which, y'know, hey, cool, good storytelling by the way. But we couldn’t be sure to trust her or not, so was it your aim to keep us on our toes, or did she just write herself that way?

ROBIN : Thank you. Yeah, I actually love Mia’s character, and I based it off of a friend of mine that I hit on twice, and got rejected by twice. So fair warning that, y'know, you reject me and I will write you into a story.

DARKWICCAN : Well, darn it. [laughter]

ROBIN : But, no, but I actually love her to death, she’s great, my friend. But I sort of based Mia on her, and – but the reason why I chose her is because I do really like her a lot, she’s a really awesome person, and so I, y'know, I felt like – I wanted Waverly to struggle with, y'know, trying to figure what her feelings are for Mia. And y'know being attracted to another person while being committed to Nicole. And I think that’s something that is very common, y'know, it’s like trying to figure out how you deal with those feelings. Y'know I think that it’s funny because the reactions were so strong against Mia. And they were like, “oh, she’s predatory” and I’m like, no, she’s really not predatory. ‘Cause if she were truly predatory, Waverly wouldn’t be interested in her at all. She’s actually a really cool person, and y'know that’s how I wanted to write her, is like somebody you could kinda see, like maybe this might actually work, y'know if she hadn’t met Nicole maybe Mia would be an option. And, y'know, so I honestly I wanted Waverly to struggle with that a little bit, and have to make that decision, and figure out ultimately how she felt about it. And I think what’s interesting is when I included Mia – I think in the last chapter – nobody seemed to react the same to her, y'know? It was like, oh, okay, she’s just a friend. And it was like Waverly felt so much more secure in her relationship with Nicole at that point, she’d had the trip to Oregon, and so Mia didn’t come across nearly as much of a threat, because Waverly kinda knew how she felt, and y'know it wasn’t a struggle any more for her. And so she could just enjoy Mia and her friendship. That’s Mia came from.

DARKWICCAN : So yeah, in addition to Mia, who is this dynamic, interesting character who is actually, y'know, like, again, as you were saying, she’s not a bad person, she’s actually a good person, she just didn’t arrive at the right time to be Waverly’s person, and it was so important for Waverly to go on that journey, and figure that out. But additionally, you captured other real life experiences, like Waverly’s work place experience at the supermarket. It’s so – ugh – it’s so true, for so many of us.

ROBIN : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : And y'know I’m wondering were you – and feel free to pass on this if it’s getting too personal – but were you drawing on a personal experience, or was this completely made up, were you drawing from a friend’s experience? Where did this come from?

ROBIN : This actually came from my own personal experience.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, so sad.

ROBIN : When I was first coming out I was not – yeah – when I was first coming out I was a clerk at a grocery store, and I had to deal with this night manager. It was sort of the same situation where I was working nights and y'know the night manager, the overnight manager, was just a complete asshole. And, y'know, I was not out in the beginning, and so when guys would come through, y'know, he’d be like, “Oh, would you sleep with him” and “oh, what do you like”. Like, oh, Christ. And it was so – it was so frustrating, and y'know he’d try and draw in like other cashiers, and y'know, just y'know, didn’t stop. And finally I was so frustrated ‘cause I mean I was literally like, I had been only been out for like a few months, and so I was still navigating like who do I tell, who do I trust with this, what do I do with this, y'know? And finally I was so pissed at him, he was like, “Oh, would you sleep with him?”, I’m like, “No, I’m gay! I wouldn’t sleep with him”. And then he got so much worse, and he was like, “Oh, I saw this video, what would you do”, I’m like, oh, my god, what the hell do I do. Like worst come-out experience ever.

DARKWICCAN : Did you have a Mia come to your rescue on a particularly bad night.

ROBIN : No, I did not, no, I did not. No, I did have a few bad nights, I did not have a Mia come to my rescue. Eventually, it took me a whole lot longer to finally confront, and I did it while quitting.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah.

ROBIN : But y'know I did have the Anthony, the supervisor that – and y'know I didn’t know him from Adam, because I was working nights and he was on days, so I’m like, I have no idea who this guy is, and I’m gonna have to y'know basically bear my soul to him, and tell him about all these horrible things that have been happening. Which is really hard, and it’s intimidating as hell, and y'know, so. But I did it, and quit, promptly.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah.

ROBIN : So I did eventually, but it took me about a month to finally say I can’t. Y'know what, like I can’t even stand the smell of the grocery store anymore, because just walking in, like that smell would like trigger all these feelings. I’m like, y'know, I hated it, and I was like I cannot walk into this building anymore, so.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, wow. Man.

ROBIN : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Was it cathartic for you to write about it?

ROBIN : It was, it was. The hard thing though – that was one place where, y'know, I had to be very, very, very careful about being super honest. I didn’t wanna get preachy, I didn’t – y'know, it’s so easy to get preachy. Especially looking back on it, in hindsight. I wanted it to feel real, but also, y'know, not sort of pass judgment on it myself. I wanted Waverly to go through that experience, have to deal with that, and figure out her own way through it. And y'know, and so that’s again that’s where just trying to be super honest in my writing, and sort limiting it to that, is where I felt like it was really important to be super honest.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. I thought it was great.

DELAYNE : So Nicole’s mother is intense. Was she based on a person from real life, or kind of a conglomeration of tropes and archetypes?

ROBIN : i completely made her up. I –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, I’m so relieved to hear that. [Delayne laughs]

ROBIN : Yeah, no, I totally made her up, she’s - physically she’s actually – I based her on the mother of one of my daughter’s schoolmates, who is so painfully beautifully, and always so put together that it’s intimidately as hell, and I can’t talk to her, like I’m afraid to talk to her because she’s always so, like, I mena she’s always wearing like a skirt suit, or a dress, or something. And I’m like, y'know, I mean even though I’m the president of the parent association of my daughter’s school and I talk to everybody I cannot talk to this woman because she is so intimidatingly beautiful. But I almost feel ike it’s – she uses it like a weapon to keep people away. Because it’s not just me, it’s everybody, everybody’s afraid to talk to her, and y'know –

DARKWICCAN : She’s weaponised her beauty.

ROBIN : She totally has, and so I was like, that’s Nicole’s Haught’s mom. That’s totally Nicole Haught’s mom, yeah. With Kathleen Turner’s voice.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, my god. [laughter] Wait, wait, are we talking 1980s Kathleen Turner, or –

ROBIN : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : - are we talking like -

ROBIN : - _Romancing The Stone_.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, _Romancing The Stone_ , okay, so before she became a double base, basically. Okay.

ROBIN : Yes.

[Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : I am so relived that, yeah, yeah, I am so relieved that she is made up, because I was kind of worried for you, I was worried for you, or for a friend of yours, I was – [Delayne laughs] So, yeah, no I’m - phew.

ROBIN : No, it was interesting when I was trying to figure out her role, I wanted to create a mother who basically you could believe Nicole’s distrust, y'know her anxiety about her mom. I wanted y'know I wanted the reader to be able to believe that, but I also wanted the reader to see that she’s a little more complicated, and I wanted them to – the readers – to be able to buy into Waverly’s hope of redemption, too. Y'know, the fact that Waverly really wants to form her own opinion of people, and y'know I brought that up with Nicole’s mom, I brought that up with Mia, y'know, with other people that – y'know, I want – a always feel like Waverly’s the kind of person who she’s gonna form her own opinion of people. She’s gonna want to make her own judgments, and not just take what other people say, so y'know when Nicole says, “My mom is terrible”, y'know, she’s like, “Okay, let me meet her. Yeah, this is fine, y'know, maybe she’s not so bad, like, y'know that can be complicating, and the mother-daughter dynamics are difficult. Let me form my own opinion.” So I wanted the reader to be able to kind of buy into like, maybe she is more complicated than Nicole’s letting on, and maybe there’s more going on her.

DARKWICCAN : Well I think that’s just true of everybody. Everybody’s more complicated than they appear on the surf act.

ROBIN : Right.

DELAYNE : And more complicated than what one person’s opinions can ever say about the other person.

DARKWICCAN : And that holds so true to _Wynonna Earp_ the series. You had these beautiful, flawed characters. Nobody’s perfect, everybody makes mistakes of varying degrees, and yeah, so I think that translated beautifully into these original characters of yours here in your Wayhaught Meet Cute Meet [sic] story. [Delayne laughs] And I would love to sit here and just wax on and on and on about it for the rest of the afternoon, but unfortunately, my friend, we’ve run out of time. [Delayne laughs] Except – I think you know what’s coming next.

ROBIN : I do. [Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : Have you made up your mind? Are you prepared to answer the next question?

ROBIN : I am. I struggled, I wrestled, I’ve y'know fought my demons, and I’ve picked one, yes.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Alright, okay. Well, since Delayne asked the last kind of interview-y question, I’m gonna jump in and take this one. If that’s okay with you, Delayne?

DELAYNE : Go for it.

DARKWICCAN : Alright. So, Robin, if that is your real name. [Delayne laughs] It’s okay if it’s not, we’re all about pseudonyms here. [Delayne laughs] You are stranded on a desert island, and can only have one fanfic to read. What is it?

ROBIN : Alright. Well, you know what, this is my only fandom, so it’s gonna be a Wayhaught. I am going to go with – and this is actually on the assumption that while on this desert island I can still get updates, because this fic is not complete. [laughter] So I can still get the updates, because that’s gonna be really important. But I’m gonna go with ‘find a home, lonely heart’ by tigerlo, because I am thoroughly enjoying the world building, and the tension, and y'know everything that –

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

ROBIN : - this writer is putting into that story. I love it so much, I am all in, I am totally invested in this story.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, tigerlo is, I think, right up there in the top five of the writers for this fandom, and she never disappoints and, as you say, ‘find a home, lonely heart’, her Wild West AU, is just immense, and incredible, and the tension is delicious.

ROBIN : It is, it’s fantastic, y'know, it is beautiful.

DELAYNE : I like your caveat, though; must be able to get the updates. You have got it all before you get stranded.

ROBIN : Exactly, exactly, we still have Wi-Fi somewhere so I can get those updates.

DARKWICCAN : Or you’ll just it installments in messages in a bottle. [laughter] Every Monday a new bottle will float up with the latest update.

ROBIN : And I’ll be waiting for it to float up.

DELAYNE : Well you won’t be locked up in your hotel room watching Wi-Fi, so.

ROBIN : Exactly, I’ll have all this extra time.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. [laughter] Well, Robin, thank you so much for coming on and chatting with us today, this has been so much fun.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for this episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Thanks for joining us. Tremendous thanks to loveisgravity for joining us to talk about their POV fic ‘Our (WayHaught) Cute Meet’. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro.

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story by Darren Korb; Fun Festival by Erik Barone; Onsen by David Fenn; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast. And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast


	30. Winnah, Winnah Pigeon Dinnah! (Season 1 Finale)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's our 30th episode and our Season Finale! We celebrate by presenting the winner of the EFA Fic Challenge as a fully-produced audiobook! Then DW and Delayne sit down to chat with author Sensitive Pigeon and their beta MsFire about creating this fun work!

 

[Click HERE to Listen!](http://efapodcast.com/winnah-winnah-pigeon-dinnah)

 

Read the fic! [Necromancy for Beginners](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14637945) by [Sensitive_Pigeon](http://ko-fi.com/sensitivepigeon)

 

Episode Artwork by [Chantal Zeegers](http://efapodcast.com/youareavision.tumblr.com)

 

 

 

Pigeon's fic they couldn't write themselves, but totally loves and recommends is: '[Our Family of Choice](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1056551)' by alesford (aka awol_newt)

 

Transcript for the Deaf and HOH by Flying Fanatic!

 

EFA Episode 30 - Winnah, Winnah Pigeon Dinnah

 

[ph] – Indicates preceding word has been spelled phonetically

[sic] – Indicates preceding word has been transcribed verbatim

 

MUSIC :  Write My Story by Olly Anna

ANNOUNCER GUY : You've tuned in to the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , a fan podcast all about _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. Join our intrepid host DarkWiccan and Delayne as they dive deep into the sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, and always varied world of fanfiction for the _Wynonna Earp_ fandom.

MUSIC : A Proper Story by Darren Korb

DARKWICCAN : Thanks Announcer Guy and welcome everybody to the season one finale episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my delightful, and wonderful, and very, very patient co-host -

DELAYNE : Hi, it’s Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we have made it to the thirty episodes, Delayne!

DELAYNE : Woo!

DARKWICCAN : Can you believe it. Oh, my gosh.

DELAYNE : Oh, loud noises.

DARKWICCAN : It is – yes, loud noises. It is incredible. Thirty episodes.

DELAYNE : I feel like I should be wearing a party hat right now.

DARKWICCAN : Right, yeah, we should be wearing party hats, and blowing little y'know party noise makers. Right? I mean – [Delayne laughs] setting off little party poppers, it’s – can you believe it? I am a – I am a – [laughter] yeah.

DELAYNE : When you told me that we were going to be doing this, and you said, on my re-listens you have said you knew we would have plenty to keep going, but did I ever think far enough ahead that we would be to thirty episodes? No, I had not.

DARKWICCAN : No. And the fact of the matter is we could keep going, non-stop, but we need a break to rest our little brains.

[laughter]

DELAYNE : I’ve got a lot more reading to do.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and we have a lot more reading to do to get ready for the second season, for sure. So yeah, so this is a little mental health break for us. But, yeah, I think that thirty is a good solid number for a season of episodes.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : But guess how many fics we have talked about in thirty episodes?

DELAYNE : Well I happen to know, ‘cause I did some math, but –

DARKWICCAN : Oh, you did? So how many have we talked about? [Delayne laughs] Because I know it’s a lot. It’s more than thirty, obviously.

DELAYNE : Right? Because we’ve had numerous episodes where we’ve kind of had a standard four format, we’ve had episodes with two or three, we’ve had episodes where we’ve focused on just one. But in all the thirty episodes we have talked about eighty-nine individual fics.

DARKWICCAN : Eighty-nine fics?!

DELAYNE : Eighty-nine. Oh, my god.

DARKWICCAN : That is a lot of fics, Delayne.

DELAYNE : I know you’ve read more than that, but – [Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, oh, totally, oh absolutely I’ve read more than that. Oh, my gosh. Wow.

DELAYNE : Yeah –

DARKWICCAN : Eighty-nine.

DELAYNE : - I just made you think about how many that you’ve read now. I mean, your brain just explode a bit.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Oh, several hundreds, if not probably close to a thousand, honestly, like, wow. But today we’re here to talk about one fic in particular.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : And that is the winner of our EFA Fic Challenge which we issued a little bit ago. The challenge was for authors to submit a fic that was no more than four thousand words, no higher than a T rating, and inspired from the prompt word “rain”. And we received thirty-four submissions, which then we narrowed down to sixteen in a harrowing feat of indecisiveness and hair-pulling. [Delayne laughs] And then we let it go to you, our listeners, and to the readers, to vote over four rounds down to a winner. And it came down to ‘Sunday Morning, Rain Is Falling’ by maidenstar and ‘Necromancy For Beginners’ by sensitive_pigeon. And ultimately sensitive_pigeon’s story emerged victorious.

DELAYNE : Ha ha!

DARKWICCAN : Ha ha! Which means that we will be featuring her story today in this first segment as an audiobook. So we’ve got to wrap up a little bit of housekeeping here, but then we’re gonna turn the segment over to the audiobook for you all to listen to.

DELAYNE : Hey!

DARKWICCAN : And then, as promised, as part of the prize package, in our second segment we will be talking with sensitive_pigeon and her beta, Msfire, to talk about how she came up with story based on the prompt, and see if maybe there’s more in store for us. [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM] we hope that you will stick with us as we continue forward into our second season.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. Before – and finally, before we dive into the audiobook of ‘Necromancy For Beginners’ by sensitive_pigeon, we have one more thing to do. [CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM] So I hope that everybody enjoys the audiobook –

DELAYNE : I know I did!

DARKWICCAN : - I worked kinda hard on it – you did? Okay. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Delayne, thank you. Appreciate it. So I hope everybody else enjoys it too, and yeah, without further ado, let’s roll it.

[Audiobook of ‘Necromancy For Beginners’ plays - read the fic here- https://archiveofourown.org/works/14637945]

[CONTENT CENSORED - SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT EFAPODCAST.COM]

MUSIC : The WTF Paranormal Agency by Sideshow Sound Theatre

DARKWICCAN : Hey everybody and welcome back to the season one finale episode of the _Earp Fiction Addiction_ , the podcast dedicated entirely to _Wynonna Earp_ fanfiction. I am still your host, DarkWiccan, and with me is my co-host –

DELAYNE : Delayne!

DARKWICCAN : And we are back in the second segment to chat with the winner of the EFA Fic Challenge 2018, the person who authored the story that you all got to listen to in the first half of our show today, and her beta. So, welcome back to sensitive_pigeon and Msfire.

MSFIRE : Thank you, hi.

PIGEON : Hello.

DARKWICCAN : So thank you so much, for a couple of reasons. One, for submitting your story to the competition, that was spectacular, obviously, it turned out really, really well. And also for coming back on the show to talk about it.

PIGEON : It was great to write, it was fun.

DARKWICCAN : It was a lot of fun. It was that perfect blend of quirky and kind of – what’s the word I’m looking for – it was that – gosh, help me out here, Delayne. It was a perfect blend of like quirkiness and also kind of – it had an _Adams Family_ feel about it, that’s what I’m looking for. It had an _Adams Family_ feel to it.

DELAYNE : Right, it still was in this dark realm, but the quirkiness, y'know, shined even brighter.

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, yeah. So, the prompt, as you know, the prompt for this competition was just the word “rain”. So what – did the prompt inspire this idea, or was it that you had already kind of had this idea percolating, and it just happened to fit the prompt perfectly?

PIGEON : It happened to fit the prompt. Me and Msfire have had this idea that Waverly would be a necromancer if she had a choice, because of how into history she is, and so I had a little sketch, but it didn’t have any direction whatsoever. So when I got the prompt I realized that it would fit the prompt.

DARKWICCAN : Awesome, so was your initial idea something that could fit into a four thousand word limit, or did you end up having to scale it back pretty drastically to fit? [Msfire laughs] Oh, it sounds like Msfire has a thought on this.

MSFIRE : I don’t think anything Pigeon ever does is really only for four thousand words. She likes to expand.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : So, Pigeon, was it easier, was it nice to have a word limit, or did it make things really difficult?

PIGEON : It made things difficult because I had to learn how to, well, write a story that had no action, because if I wrote action into it, it would be too short, so I just had to let it be a fluffy sort of world-building introduction to the world, so. It was hard.

DARKWICCAN : Well I’m both happy and sad that the word limit kind of constrained you to that point, but I think that this does make for a great jumping off point into a larger world if you choose to continue on with this universe that you’ve created.

MSFIRE : Are you gonna tell them? [laughter]

PIGEON : Yeah, I’ll probably –

MSFIRE : You’re gonna tell them?

PIGEON : Am I gonna tell them? Uh… yeah, I’m probably gonna continue it. Depending on how much time I have.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, my gosh, that’s incredible.

DELAYNE : I definitely saw many, many calls for this to be continued. At least many people volunteering that they would gladly read a continuation, and count me amongst those, please.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, me too.

MSFIRE : People seem to really like the idea of them just being more magical, and more on their own adventure, it’s interesting to see how many people really, really like this story.

DARKWICCAN : Well it’s a fantastic story, it’s so – well, it’s terrifically written, but, y'know, that’s no surprise. But it’s delightful, and it does have element of cuteness to it, but it’s a nice kind of _Ruby Gloom_ sort of cuteness. I don’t know if anyone is familiar with the Canadian cartoon _Ruby Gloom_ , but it’s basically strawberry shortcake for emo kids. So – or goth kids. [Delayne laughs]

DELAYNE : What?

DARKWICCAN : Oh, you’re not familiar with _Ruby Gloom_? Oh, man, I highly recommend it to everybody, it is one of my all-time favorite cartoon series.

MSFIRE : Cannot say I’m familiar.

PIGEON : No.

DELAYNE : Yeah, you’ve lost all of us.

DARKWICCAN : Well, had to happen eventually, right?

DELAYNE : [laughter] Well, we’ve been lost with Pigeon before, so seems appropriate.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, so yeah we got lost again, nice, but this time it was my fault. [Delayne laughs] So, Pigeon, what were the most important parts of the story? What story beats did you really feel like you had to make sure that you hit within those four thousand words?

PIGEON : How Nicole thinks how Waverly has always been magic, in a way?

DARKWICCAN : That’s so sweet, yeah.

PIGEON : I think that was really important. I also wanted her to raise a corpse. [Delayne laughs] Because I just thought it was cool, it was a really cool scene to write, and I hope it was fun to read. I wanted to show her doing some magic.

DARKWICCAN : Well, I mean, it is ‘Necromancy For Beginners’, so I just love the fact that not only does she succeed – not only does she raise a corpse, but she ultimately fails the exam, really, even though Curtis was nice and gave her a half credit, y'know, because she raised the corpse, but the corpse didn’t do what her assignment was, which was to speak to her. And then of course he was just – [Delayne laughs] he was just keeping mum the whole time ‘cause he was ticked off at her for waking him up.

DELAYNE : [laughter] Don’t mind me. This story is so great, like, even you just talking about it I’m laughing my ass off.

PIGEON : Well, thank you. I’m glad I could make you laugh.

MSFIRE : I will admit, it cracks me up every time when I hear that part about the Learner’s Permit. It just gets me every time.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. [Delayne laughs] Yeah, absolutely, I love that. “I have a Learner’s Permit from the RCMP”. Just a Learner’s Permit?

MSFIRE : What a perfect deadpan moment.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. Yeah. Just absolutely, absolutely hilarious. All of the elements of this story – I mean, again, and I think part of what makes them work so well is because you had – you were limited, so you really – every moment had to count, ‘cause you were limited by the word count. And so you have all of these lovely, delightful, clever, hilarious beats that just happen in almost a perfect rhythm with each other throughout. So I just couldn’t stop smiling the entire time I read it the first time through. I did have to get over it in order to record the audiobook, ‘cause a narrator with a smile in their voice doesn’t necessarily work. [laughter] But yeah, it’s just all these clever little moments that all add up to this beautiful little one-shot, I just, I adore this story so much.

PIGEON : Thank you.

DARKWICCAN : Well, you’re welcome. [laughter] You are positively welcome.

DELAYNE : Pigeon, what was your favorite moment to write?

PIGEON : My favorite moment to write has got to be – well, it’s obviously the raising the corpse part. That one took me the most time, and was the most fun to write. But the rest of the story came together after that, but it wasn’t as much fun.

DELAYNE : So that was your starting point -

DARKWICCAN : Wasn’t as much fun?

DELAYNE : - was writing that scene of raising the corpse?

PIGEON : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Do you know in your head what the deceased gentleman’s name was?

PIGEON : Oh, no, his name is Dead Guy. [Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : His name is Dead Guy, okay. Okay. Not some fantastic, old, Western name like Zebadiah Hawkins, or something?

PIGEON : [laughter] It could be Zebadiah, but no. For now he’s just Dead Guy.

DARKWICCAN : He’s Dead Guy. Did you think about any sort of personal history for Dead Guy? Like who was he before he died, and Waverly disturbed his slumber?

PIGEON : I’m pretty sure he was killed by a vampire. It’s – can I go into a little bit about the world?

DELAYNE : Please tell us more.

PIGEON : Okay, so the reason that Waverly can just raise a corpse and get away with it is because the necromancers are legally able to do their stuff. Everybody is too scared shitless of vampires to really, y'know, question the people who are dedicated to fighting them, so you can sign up for your own corpse to be raised as a servant, and you get to hang out in this cool office building with the necromancers, doing their business.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : So it’s like an organ donor program, but it’s more of my corpse donor program?

PIGEON : Yes, absolutely.

DARKWICCAN : And if you were to continue the series, this is kind of the deeper mythology that you’d be digging into?

PIGEON : Yes. [Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : That’s awesome.

DELAYNE : “Digging into”.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, nice one. [laughter] I didn’t even realize what I’d said. It’s always the accidental that one liners that pay off the most.

DELAYNE : Oh, I usually assume that you do these on purpose. That was great.

DARKWICCAN : So, Msfire, what was your favorite moment in the story?

MSFIRE : Honestly, the same thing. That whole conversation where they’re just desperately terrified, and Waverly gets that courage to ask Nicole out, and it’s just so like, “Well, I wouldn’t have had the courage otherwise”. Like, that whole thing is perfect. It really sets up such like a – their perfect of dynamic of this unbelievable terror always around them, but they still always manage to focus on each other.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, exactly. And I have to agree. I think I’ve got a couple of favorite moments in this story. The first one is when – it is part of the corpse being raised – and the first thing he does is politely tip his hat. [Delayne laughs] Love that moment.

MSFIRE : Just because you’re dead, doesn’t mean you can’t have manners.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, manners are important. And young folks today forget that. [Delayne laughs] And I also loved the bit with Nicole and Wynonna where Nicole’s like, “Do I know you from somewhere?” and Wynonna’s like, “Nope!”. [Delayne laughs] That –

PIGEON : Yeah, there’s like –

DARKWICCAN : That just makes me want to know more about where, and what, Wynonna had been getting into, that Nicole would have at least in passing glance have run across her path. Probably at the Sheriff’s station.

PIGEON : Yeah, there are a bunch of wanted posters for magical shenaniganry. She’s wanted in all areas of Canada. [laughter]

DELAYNE : We’re getting some fun backstory here, now, this is great.

DARKWICCAN : What inspired the whole notion of necromancers – well, is Nicole, is she a necromancer, at this point? Or is she just –

PIGEON : Nicole?

DARKWICCAN : - like a – no? Okay.

PIGEON : Nicole is, no, she’s not a necromancer. I don’t wanna spoil anything.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, don’t spoil anything. Would it spoil anything to explain why she gets a moose?

PIGEON : No, it wouldn’t spoil anything. So the RCMP they employ mooses. Meese. [Delayne laughs] Meesi. [ph] Moose. Okay. Because, I mean, when you’re fighting a wizard, like, or trying to arrest somebody who’s magically inclined, like a werewolf, or something, your horse is just gonna like not deal with that. So you need something that doesn’t care, so they have magical moose that don’t care about anything, including physics. So – [Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : Gotta love those physics defying moose, I mean.

PIGEON : Yeah. So that’s moose thing. They ride moose.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so they actually ride the moose?

PIGEON : Yes, they actually ride the moose.

DARKWICCAN : That’s fantastic. I love it so much, because I totally picture the official RCMP supernatural division saddle, probably with some pretty great insignia sorta tooled into the leather, would you say?

PIGEON : Yeah, they have all sorts of special stuff, y'know, wizards love their aesthetics, they’re just theatre kids with magic. [Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : That’s fantastic. [Delayne laughs] As a theatre kid myself, I can agree with that description wholeheartedly. I’m not a wizard, so I can’t y'know confirm on that side of things, but.

DELAYNE : But if you could be..?

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah, it would all be about the flair, and the wardrobe, and the hand-tooled leather of my moose saddle, for sure. [Delayne laughs]

PIGEON : I mean they absolutely have that, there’s so much, so much.

DARKWICCAN : I – y'know, again, I – y'know, if you continue on in this universe, and it sounds like you are, I’m very excited to learn more about the mythology and the world building that you’ve done, because it sounds like you’ve got a lot of it figured out, and it’s gonna be epic, and delightful.

PIGEON : Thank you, yeah. I actually took – uh, building the world took me about as long as writing the fic itself. So that was a couple weeks.

DARKWICCAN : A couple weeks? And what you made decide, hey, I’m gonna actually entrer this contest?

PIGEON : Well I was really scared, obviously, but I just thought, you know what, I’ll give it a try, hopefully I make it past a few rounds.

DELAYNE : [laughter] How far did you think it would go?

PIGEON : Not very far. I’m pretty competitive, though, so it was always hoping to win.

DARKWICCAN : Well I think that your work absolutely proved your strengths in this competition, for sure, and I knew once you had submitted it, I was like, oh this is gonna be one of the fics to watch, for sure. Honestly, truth, none of us here – y'know, myself, Delayne, and Laragh – we had no idea who, ultimately, was gonna win, because it truly was in the hands of the readers once we posted our top sixteen. So it was a white knuckle ride for us, because we honestly didn’t know what was gonna happen, but I am thrilled that yours is the story that came out on top. I had so much fun recording it. Although I will say that I was nervous about recording it, because your story had the most characters, so I had to come up with unique voices for all of these different characters, whereas some of the other stories only had two or three. So I was like, oh, man. I’m gonna really have to get creative here.

DELAYNE : Well I think you did a fantastic job, DW, so.

DARKWICCAN : Well, thank you, Delayne, I really appreciate that.

MSFIRE : I think that really speaks to Pigeon’s writing as a whole, anyway, she’s more than willing to grab a character and bring them along for the ride, instead of just sticking to the two main characters, and focusing on that. More everybody else to throw away, so their voices don’t really matter.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, that’s the thing, every single character in this story, as you say, their voices mattered, they were important, they were integral. No one, including the dead guy, was a throw away. [Delayne laughs]

PIGEON : Thank you, yeah, I really wanted to make an effort, and to not have anyone extra. But if they’re included they should have a defined purpose.

DARKWICCAN : A defined purpose, you say?

PIGEON : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, and I think you absolutely succeeded, and really you kind of had an original character with Curtis, because even though he is a canon character, none of us have any idea what he looks like, what he sounds like, what his characteristics were, aside from loving his tomato patch and Gus. So who did you draw inspiration from in creating your Curtis?

PIGEON : I think we do know a lot about Curtis, in how Waverly behaves. I think that speaks to somebody who was patient, and kind, and we do know that he paid for her classes, so he was always supportive of her, in canon. And, yeah, I think we do know a lot about Curtis, because, y'know, from what we can infer about Gus, she’s a bit, y'know, more hard. I think Curtis was the softer one.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, I’d say that’s a fair assessment, for sure. And that’s always the case with parents, right, it’s a good cop, bad cop – or in this case, it’s an uncle split – but, y'know, the people that raise you, if there are two of them, there’s typically a good cop and a bad cop.

PIGEON : Yeah.

DARKWICCAN : What elements were important to you about your Curtis that you needed to come through in the storytelling?

PIGEON : Well, I needed somebody to teach Waverly. I wanted to give Waverly someone. I wanted to give her family. I wanted to give her something nice. [Delayne laughs] That’s all I wanted. So I just built this character who would be a loving father figure, and just y'know patient, and kind, and stuff. I just really wanted to give her someone nice. To see as a father, instead of Ward.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah. So when you close your eyes and you picture Curtis, what do you – what characteristics do you picture in your mind?

PIGEON : Oh, man. I guess he’s got a little bit of a beard. I mean, it’s just – he’s about Wynonna’s height, he’s not really overweight, he’s more muscular, works with his hands, raising good people and stuff. Probably an older man.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, yeah, no I completely agree with you, Pigeon. In fact, when I picture Curtis in my mind I picture the actor Burl Ives, from the 1950s and 60s. and I’m sure a lot of folks out there are going, “Whom?” but if you Google Burl Ives, it’s B-U-R-L I-V-E-S, that’s kind of who I picture, and kinda who also who I vocally based my reading of the character on, to a point. I was actually joking with Laragh that ultimately what I ended up doing for Curtis was sort of a combination voice of Morgan Freeman and Sam Eliot, with a dusty of Burl Ives kind of mental imagery thrown in. So I’m hoping that that’s comes through when folks listen back to the story. Anyway.

PIGEON : Yeah, taking a look, that’s pretty close to what I saw, yeah.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, Burl’s picture? Yeah. Well do you think if EFA holds another competition next year, do you think you’ll come back, if you’re inspired by the prompt?

PIGEON : Next year? Uh –

DARKWICCAN : Oh yeah.

DELAYNE : Wait, this is gonna be a regular thing?

DARKWICCAN : Mhm, yeah, totally. Totally gonna be a regular thing.

PIGEON : Yeah, I might re-enter.

DARKWICCAN : Well I know that I would love to see another entry from yourself and your fantastic beta, msfire. Is it M S Fire? Have I been saying it wrong this whole time?

MSFIRE : Yeah, it’s msfire.

DARKWICCAN : It is msfire, okay. But you answer to both, or?

MSFIRE : I just do anyway, right?

DARKWICCAN : Right? [laughter]

MSFIRE : It’s all text, we barely say our words out loud, right? [Delayne laughs]

DARKWICCAN : That’s true.

DELAYNE : Yeah, the first time I started talking to DW here, like this is so weird, we’re just used to messaging each other back and forth, I hear your voice and that is bizarre now. When we have a week off it’s like, I haven’t talked to you, what’s going on?

DARKWICCAN : [laughter] And now we’re about to have quite a few weeks off, because this is, as we said, the season finale episode of season one for the _EFA Podcast_ , and we’re about to take a couple month break before we come back.

MSFIRE : Well-earned break, lots of good work was done.

DARKWICCAN : Thank you, thank you so much. But before we sign off on this episode, this finale episode, we do have a little bit of business still to take care of. Now, we’ve both asked you before, when you came on to talk about ‘Get Lost’, what your desert island fics were. So we’re not gonna ask that of you again. Instead what we’re going to ask is what is the one type of story that you would love to see written for Wayhaught, but that you yourself feel you couldn’t write? So not necessarily a story that’s been written yet, just a style, or a theme, or a scenario, that you would like to see tackled that you don’t think is in your wheelhouse.

PIGEON : Oh, my god. That’s so hard. That’s a hard-ass question.

DARKWICCAN : It’s the only hard-ball we have.

MSFIRE : You know, I’m not even really a writer, I’m just like a fool who makes jokes sometimes. Like, my like fic was a horror story, and blessed to get it with ‘Get Lost’, to be honest.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, ‘Get Lost’ is absolutely, positively brilliant.

MSFIRE : Like you said, like horror stories are my like jam, but I never thought I would see one in fic, and ‘Get Lost’ is so amazing. So really ‘Get Lost’ is my answer to that fic.

DARKWICCAN : Okay. Awesome.

DELAYNE : Dream came true. Brilliant.

DARKWICCAN : That works for me.

PIGEON : I think –

MSFIRE : Seriously.

PIGEON : Oh, fuck. Oh, my god, this is so hard. Oh, my god. Family fics, family, about families and stuff. Oh, my god, can I recommend a good one, please? Please?

DARKWICCAN : Of course you can.

PIGEON : Thank you! I wanna recommend – his name is awol_newt, but online, oh, my god, hang on, please…

DARKWICCAN : alesford?

PIGEON : Yes! Alesford! Alesford. ‘The Angel’. Just – incredible. It’s just incredible, okay? Gotta read it. So those types of fics I can’t write myself, but I fucking love ‘em.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, in fact they have – alesford has series dedicated to that, right? Or if it’s not actually – yeah, ‘our family of choice’.

MSFIRE : Yeah!

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, the ‘our family of choice’ series.

PIGEON : Yes.

MSFIRE : Yes.

PIGEON : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, alesford was kind of – I know that they’ve dedicated a story or two to you, from that series. They actually did dedicated a story to the podcast as well, which was very, very sweet. So yeah, we’re huge fans of alesford here on the podcast.

DELAYNE : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Yes. So I think that’s a fantastic recommendation –

PIGEON : It’s incredible.

DARKWICCAN : - for us to close out the season with.

DELAYNE : [laughter] So everyone who loves Pigeon, write Pigeon some nice happy family fic.

DARKWICCAN : Yes.

PIGEON : Thank you, I would appreciate it.

DARKWICCAN : So, yeah, ‘cause you need some sort of alternative to the subject matter that is what you typically tend to write, which is the darker sort of horror-driven storylines.

MSFIRE : Hey, we’re nice to everybody in ‘180’.

DARKWICCAN : Oh, ‘180’ is delightful. ‘180’ is a delight. [Delayne laughs]

PIGEON : Let’s not talk about the next chapter.

MSFIRE : Yeah, no.

DARKWICCAN : We won’t.

PIGEON : And how hard that one’s gonna go.

DARKWICCAN : But thank you both so much for coming back on the show to chat about ‘Necromancy For Beginners’. It’s been wonderful talking with you again, I was absolutely thrilled when I saw the submission come through initially in the fic challenge. I am so overwhelmingly happy for you that it made all the way to the top. It was so much fun to record, and I just look forward to every new story that you bless us with, Pigeon. You just, you have got a real talent, my dear.

PIGEON : Thank you very much, that means a lot to me.

DELAYNE : I was excited to talk to you again, because I mean, we’ve had people on more than once, but that was generally like as betas, or they did a collaborative fic. You are our first repeat author.

PIGEON : Thank you.

DELAYNE : So I was happy to see that you won, and we got to talk to you again.

DARKWICCAN : And msfire thank you for coming back on, and thank you for all the work that you do to support Pigeon and the other authors that you beta for, if there are any. I’m sure there are. But it really, again, we always talk about how important betas are, because even when you have an incredible talent, like Pigeon obviously has, it’s always nice to have that extra set of eyes to kind of watch your back and make sure that everything is – the story’s being told the way the author is intending for it to be.

MSFIRE : Yeah, ‘course, happy to do it.

PIGEON : Yeah, thank you msfire.

DARKWICCAN : Yeah, you’re lucky, you get to see a sneak preview of Pigeon’s work before the rest of us get to see the final product. I’d say that’s a darn lucky position to be in.

MSFIRE : Absolutely.

PIGEON : Oh, god, she sees the worst shit. She sees the –

MSFIRE : Sometimes your diamonds in the rough just need some love.

PIGEON : She has seen some crazy shit.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Oh, man, if only we could provide out-takes of fics, right?

MSFIRE : Yeah, there is some ‘Necromancy’ stuff that just – wild.

PIGEON : I did post it, I did post it on my ko-fi, if you wanna go to my ko-FI :.  

DARKWICCAN : Oh, yeah, that’s right, everybody, Pigeon does have a ko-fi. That’s k-o dash f-i dot com?

PIGEON : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : It is slash sensitive-pigeon? Or sensitive underscore pigeon?

PIGEON : Slash – uh – let me check. Yeah, ko-fi slash sensitivepigeon, no space, no underscore. Sensitivepigeon.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so, ko-fi, that’s k-o dash f-I, correct?

PIGEON : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : dot com, slash sensitivepigeon. Awesome. So, everybody, take a couple minutes out of your day, and go and buy sensitive pigeon a cup of coffee, because –

PIGEON : Oh, thank you.

DARKWICCAN : - or a cup of tea, sweet tea, specifically. [Delayne laughs] It is absolutely worthwhile, because the rewards you get in return are fantastic, and those rewards are incredible storytelling, and the knowledge that you are supporting a delightful individual and her bird.

PIGEON : Thank you. Bird seed costs a lot. Like, you wouldn’t believe.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Pigeons are – hey, birds are expensive. I mean the see alone.

PIGEON : Enyo cost me thirty dollars. Thirty whole dollars.

DARKWICCAN : But that was just to adopt him, right?

PIGEON : Yes.

DARKWICCAN : Okay, so the ongoing care is a constant cost. I’m trying to get people to give you money, Pigeon, work with me here.

PIGEON : I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

[laughter]

DARKWICCAN : Okay, but I think that’s enough from us for today. Thank you everyone who has tuned in to listen to us for this first season. Please enjoy the rest of _Wynonna Earp_ season three. We will be back at the end of October 2018. And just remember to read more fic.

MUSIC : Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan

DARKWICCAN : And that's all for Season One of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Thanks for joining us.

Huge thanks to our incredible lead transcriber: Flying Fanatic. And to our fantastic volunteer back-up transcribers: Climb, MrsBlueBacon and Jordan R Theilman. Thanks also to our announcer Byron Tidwell for our intro

Background music for the episode was: A Proper Story  by Darren Korb; Vagrant Song (Northwest) by Ryan Ike; The WTF Paranormal Agency by Sideshow Sound Theatre; and the outro music is Don't Deal with the Devil by Kristoffer Madigan.

If you have questions or comments for the podcast you can find us on Twitter at E-F-A underscore Podcast and on Facebook at E-F-A Podcast.  And you can find all of our episodes, old and new, at our website E-F-A Podcast dot com. And if you're listening on iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review our show.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you'll join us again in October 2018 for Season Two of the Earp Fiction Addiction. Until then, READ MORE FIC!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast

**Author's Note:**

> New Episodes post Mondays at 8am PST
> 
> Visit our Website http://efapodcast.com/ for all episodes old and new!
> 
> Follow us on Twitter: @efa_podcast
> 
> And on Facebook: facebook.com/EFAPodcast
> 
> We're also on iTunes!


End file.
